ULTRASONIC TRANSDUCER HEALTH STATUS MONITOR

• Main Authors: CHEN, Longfei, SAI, Bin, LIU, Binbing
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 24.03.2022
• Subjects: ANALOGOUS ARRANGEMENTS USING OTHER WAVES; DETERMINING DISTANCE OR VELOCITY BY USE OF RADIO WAVES; FOR PERFORMING MECHANICAL WORK IN GENERAL; GENERATING OR TRANSMITTING MECHANICAL VIBRATIONS IN GENERAL; LOCATING OR PRESENCE-DETECTING BY USE OF THE REFLECTION ORRERADIATION OF RADIO WAVES; MEASURING; MEASURING ELECTRIC VARIABLES; MEASURING MAGNETIC VARIABLES; MEASURING VOLUME, VOLUME FLOW, MASS FLOW OR LIQUIDLEVEL; METERING BY VOLUME; METHODS OR APPARATUS FOR GENERATING OR TRANSMITTING MECHANICALVIBRATIONS OF INFRASONIC, SONIC, OR ULTRASONIC FREQUENCY; PERFORMING OPERATIONS; PHYSICS; RADIO DIRECTION-FINDING; RADIO NAVIGATION; TESTING; TRANSPORTING

An ultrasonic-based system includes a transmitter and receiver, an ultrasonic transducer including ≥1 piezoelectric element having a matching layer thereon connected to the transmitter. A controller is coupled to the transmitter. The transmitter is for driving the piezoelectric element with a pulsed electrical signal, where the piezoelectric element transmits a transmit ultrasonic signal. A current/voltage measurement circuit is coupled to sense a current or voltage in the transmitter. The controller is for implementing an algorithm for an ultrasonic transducer monitoring method including comparing an amplitude of the pulsed signal to a predetermined limit. When the pulsed signal is determined to be outside the limit, an impedance of the piezoelectric element is determined to be abnormal. When the pulsed signal is within the limit, the amplitude of the received signal is compared to a lower limit, which when below results in determining a cleaning operation for the ultrasonic transducer is needed.