Miniature all-silica fiber optic pressure and acoustic sensors

We present a miniature diaphragm-based Fabry-Perot (F-P) interferometric fiber optic sensor fabricated by novel techniques for pressure or acoustic wave measurement that is only approximately 0.32 mm in diameter. By choosing different diaphragm thicknesses and effective diameters, we obtain a sensor measurement range from 5 to 10,000 psi (1 psi = 51.72 Torr) and a frequency response up to 2 MHz. In addition, the sensor's F-P cavity can be set from micrometers to millimeters with a precision of several nanometers. With the all-silica structure, the sensor is reliable, biocompatible, and immune to electromagnetic interference and has high-temperature sensing capability.     

The measurement of the free field impulse response of microphones in a laboratory environment

A method is presented of measuring the free field frequency and impulse response of microphones by using a pulse technique in an ordinary laboratory environment. The pressure transient generated by exciting a loudspeaker with a narrow pulse is detected at some point in the loudspeaker's far field by a “reference” microphone whose response is assumed flat over the frequency range of interest. The microphone to be tested is then substituted in exactly the same position and its response to the transient measured. The outputs of the two microphones are accurately sampled and deconvolved by using a discrete Fourier transform technique to give the magnitude and phase parts of the “test” microphone's frequency response, and hence, via the discrete Fourier transform, its response to a delta function of pressure propagating in the free field. The computed impulse responses are presented and the accuracy of the method discussed.To illustrate the use of the method, the free field frequency response and free field correction curves of a one inch instrumentation microphone are measured. The method is then used to measure the pressure which occurs at the centre of the flat end-face of a long a cylinder when excited by an impulse of acoustic pressure propagating in the free field from various angles of incidence.     

Tunable-optical-filter-based white-light interferometry for sensing

We describe tunable-optical-filter-based white-light interferometry for sensor interrogation. By introducing a tunable optical filter into a white-light interferometry system, one can interrogate an interferometer with either quadrature demodulation or spectral-domain detection at low cost. To demonstrate the feasibility of effectively demodulating various types of interferometric sensor, experiments have been performed using an extrinsic Fabry-Perot tunable filter to interrogate two extrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometric temperature sensors and a diaphragm-based pressure sensor.     

Influence of the size,geometry and temporal response of the finite piezoelectric sensor on the photoacoustic signal: the case of the point-like source

Most photoacoustic (PA) work assumes a point-like detection of generated pressure waves; this assumption results in important differences between predicted and experimental signals, as shown in this paper. We used the geometry of a real sensor in the theoretical signal generation through the discretization of the sensing surface, considering each element as a point-like sensor. We modeled the interaction between the wavefront and the real sensor, starting from a well-known PA pressure relation for a point-like source and punctual detection. We obtained the electrical response of the real sensor experimentally and modeled it as a summation of Gaussian functions. The impulse response was convolved with the total PA pressure to obtain the theoretical PA signal. We analyzed the dependence of the source-sensor distance on the discretization size. Then the predicted signal and experimental data were compared for two different frequency response transducers. We found differences in shape and temporal width of simulated PA signals for point-like-source/punctual-detection model and for point-like-source/finite-sensor model.     

Reliability of estimating the room volume from a single room impulse response

The methods investigated for the room volume estimation are based on geometrical acoustics, eigenmode, and diffuse field models and no data other than the room impulse response are available. The measurements include several receiver positions in a total of 12 rooms of vastly different sizes and acoustic characteristics. The limitations in identifying the pivotal specular reflections of the geometrical acoustics model in measured room impulse responses are examined both theoretically and experimentally. The eigenmode method uses the theoretical expression for the Schroeder frequency and the difficulty of accurately estimating this frequency from the varying statistics of the room transfer function is highlighted. Reliable results are only obtained with the diffuse field model and a part of the observed variance in the experimental results is explained by theoretical expressions for the standard deviation of the reverberant sound pressure and the reverberation time. The limitations due to source and receiver directivity are discussed and a simple volume estimation method based on an approximate relationship with the reverberation time is also presented.     

硅酸镓镧声表面波传感器的压力温度多参数解耦分析

针对硅酸镓镧声表面波压力传感器,提出了一种温度和压力的多参数解耦方法。理论上采用有限元方法与微扰理论结合,计算传感器在不同温度、压力下频率响应。根据计算结果,构造出传感器温度与压力的解耦公式。以一种基于LGS(0°,0°,100°)点压力式SAW传感器为例,理论计算得到其温度与压力解耦公式的具体参数,同时与在-55℃-125℃,0-1 MPa范围内的实验测试结果对比。理论分析和实验测试结果基本吻合,验证了温度压力多参量解耦方法的正确性。      

Impulse characteristic as a response of a liquid sensor based on shear-horizontal surface acoustic waves

The feasibility of using the impulse response of a liquid sensor based on shear-horizontal surface acoustic waves to identify liquids is justified. Identification of some liquid analytes with a single-channel sensor is experimentally demonstrated. The sensor is built around a delay line based on shear-horizontal surface acoustic waves that are excited in a 36°YX LiTaO₃-Al film-SiO₂ film-molecularly imprinted polymer film layered structure. By way of example, the concentration of the morpholine impurity (molecules of which are used as a template in synthesis of this molecularly imprinted polymer) in the liquids is measured. Impulse characteristics are derived by applying the fast inverse Fourier transformation to the amplitude-frequency responses of the sensor taken in a 60-MHz wide band at a center frequency of 105 MHz. The reproducibility of results obtained using such a technique and its application are discussed.     

Observation of negative group delays within a coaxial photonic crystal using an impulse response method

An impulse response experiment is described which independently verifies the recently observed result of negative group delayed propagation within a coaxial photonic crystal. This result was unexpected when it was reported and has been the subject of enduring controversy because theoretical models predict that negative group delays should not be possible in passive linear media. The impulse response method allows for the determination of both the transmission amplitude and the group delay for narrow-band wave packets over a wide frequency range in one simple experiment. The impulse response results presented here confirm our earlier finding of negative group delays within the band gap region and are in excellent agreement with the more traditional approach of measuring transit times for wave packets. However, negative group delays are observed only over very narrow frequency ranges within the wider band gap suggesting that another interference mechanism is involved.     

Time domain identification of standing wave parameters in gas piping systems

A method for experimentally determining the natural frequencies and modal pressures of an air or gas piping system is presented. Such information is of interest in installations where pressure pulsations caused by pumps or compressors are of importance. In the method a time domain based technique is used which was originally developed as an alternative to frequency response methods for determining the vibration parameters (natural frequencies, modes, damping factors) of structures, to avoid difficulties often encountered in interpreting complex and non-conclusive frequency response data such as arises from systems having numerous modes, some of which may be highly damped or closely spaced in frequency. In this application, a straight steel pipe with a sound source at one end and closed at the other end was used. Two microphones were used to measure the pressure at two locations in the pipe. The free pressure response following a rapidly swept sinewave input was recorded, digitized and then used in a computational procedure based on a lumped parameter representation of the system. The natural frequencies and the corresponding modal pressure ratios at the two stations, thus obtained, are compared with mention here that although in the experiment reported here an external frequency sweep excitation was used, the technique works as well with free decay response after a system shut-off, impulse response or random responses from normal system operation.     

一种精确计算换能器空间脉冲响应的快速方法

空间脉冲响应被认为是最有效的瞬态声场计算方法,针对空间脉冲响应直接计算时需要很高的采样频率,导致数据量大、计算效率差的问题,推导了空间点与其在换能器平面的投影点脉冲响应之间的关系,提出了一种计算脉冲响应的快速算法,探讨了计算采样频率和插值采样频率对计算精度和计算效率的影响,研究发现,采用1000 MHz采样频率能够保证精度要求,采用500 MHz作为插值时的采样频率是较优的选择。该方法与直接求解相比,可提高计算效率18倍。      

Temperature self-compensation fiber-optic pressure sensor based on fiber Bragg grating and Fabry–Perot interference multiplexing

A high performance multiplexed fiber-optic sensor consisted of diaphragm-based extrinsic Fabry–Perot interferometer (DEFPI) and fiber Bragg grating (FBG) is proposed. The novel structure DEFPI fabricated with laser heating fusion technique possesses high sensitivity with 5.35 nm/kPa (36.89 nm/psi) and exhibits ultra-low temperature dependence with 0.015 nm/°C. But the ultra-low temperature dependence still results in small pressure measurement error of the DEFPI (0.0028 kPa/°C). The designed stainless epoxy-free packaging structure guarantees the FBG to be only sensitive to temperature. The temperature information is created to calibrate the DEFPI's pressure measurement error induced by the temperature dependence, realizing effectively temperature self-compensation of the multiplexed sensor. The sensitivity of the FBG is 10.5 pm/°C. In addition, the multiplexed sensor is also very easy to realize the pressure and the temperature high-precise high-sensitive simultaneous measurement at single point in many harsh environmental areas.     

Multi-functional metamaterial sensor based on a broad-side coupled SRR topology with a multi-layer substrate

This paper intends to demonstrate the feasibility of a miniaturized multi-purpose metamaterial sensor that can be effectively used for chemical, biological and pressure sensing in microwave and terahertz applications. This novel sensor design makes use of the double-sided split ring resonator (DSRR) topology that is modified to have an additional sensing medium sandwiched between two identical broadside coupled SRR unit cells. The resonance frequency of the resulting DSRR sensor shifts as the dielectric permittivity or thickness of this interlayer medium changes in response to variations in an environmental parameter such as temperature, humidity, density, concentration or pressure. As a proof of concept study, both numerical and experimental results are presented with very good agreement for a multi-functional miniaturized metamaterial sensor prototype operating in X-band. Simulations for three different real-life scenarios are also presented for this sensor topology to demonstrate a moisture sensor, a density sensor and a temperature sensor with very good sensitivities where the interlayer medium is occupied by sawdust, silica aerogel and seawater, respectively.     

The forward and backward projection of acoustic fields from axisymmetric ultrasonic radiators using impulse response and Hankel transform techniques

A generalized impulse response formulation to evaluate the harmonic pressure field of ultrasonic planar vibrators having axisymmetric nonuniform surface velocity distributions is presented. The harmonic pressure is expressed as a Fourier transform of a generalized impulse response which is a function of the spatially nonuniform velocity of the vibrator. A backward projection method is then developed to reconstruct the normal surface velocity of axisymmetric vibrators from harmonic field pressures using an angular spectrum or Hankel transform formulation. The numerical accuracy of the backward projection technique is evaluated using the impulse response formulation to evaluate the pressure fields for several velocity distributions on disk vibrators. Experiments were performed to reconstruct the velocity distributions over the surface of a uniformly driven piezoelectric ceramic disk and ceramic ring using farfield measurements of the complex pressure. The experimental results were in good agreement with theoretical results based on the electrode patterns of the transducers.     

瞬态电磁场测试的无源电光式传感器

 介绍了一种用于瞬态电磁场测试的无源电光式传感器及其应用系统,其信号输入动态范围约为60dB,频率响应范围为10kHz～700MHz,这种探头部分无源化的传感器具有抗电磁干扰能力强、体积小等优点,可用于复杂电磁环境下或小空间内的脉冲电磁场测量。     

An approximate treatment of reflection coefficient in the phased beam tracing method for the simulation of enclosed sound fields at medium frequencies

The phased beam tracing method (PBTM) was suggested as a medium-frequency simulation technique for the calculation of impulse response, although main assumptions of geometric acoustics still hold. The phased method needs the reflection coefficient for characterizing the acoustic property of a surface and the complex wave number for describing the propagation characteristics. In this study, two types of approximate real reflection coefficients derived from the measured absorption coefficient were tested for a practical applicability. As a test example, pressure impulse responses and energy impulse responses computed from the PBTM were compared with those from the measurement and the ordinary beam tracing method. The PBTM employing the approximate reflection coefficients greatly increased the accuracy of the prediction compared to the ordinary beam tracing method, in particular at the medium-frequency range in octave bands above the Schroeder cutoff frequency. A comparison was made between angle-dependent and angle-independent reflection coefficients in the calculation of acoustic measures. Although the angle-dependent reflection coefficient yielded best matched results with measured data, but the simple angle-independent reflection coefficient can be also used with a reasonably good precision.     

侧面压迫式及端面拉伸式增敏光纤光栅水声传感器

研究了采用侧面压迫式增敏和端面拉伸式增敏的无源光纤光栅水声传感器。采用灌注和弹性片端面增敏两种方案分别对光纤光栅传感器进行增敏。研究结果表明灌注方案谐振频率过低(300Hz),高频灵敏度过低(小于-205dB),且制作工艺要求比较复杂;弹性片端面增敏方案采用铍铜片进行增敏,在100～1000Hz频率范围内灵敏度为(-175±2)dB。对端面增敏传感器进行了封装,并应用于水声的检测实验。实验表明,该传感器在灵敏度及灵敏度频响指标上已经可以满足应用要求。     

Coupling analysis of a matched piezoelectric sensor and actuator pair for vibration control of a smart beam

This paper presents a theoretical and experimental study of the in-plane and out-of-plane coupling of a matched piezoelectric sensor/actuator pair bonded on a beam. Both the sensor and actuator are triangularly shaped polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) transducers and are intended to provide a compact sensor/actuator system for beam vibration control. The measured sensor-actuator frequency response function has shown an unpredicted increase in magnitude with frequency, which was found, to be due to in-plane vibration coupling. An analytical model has been developed to decompose the sensor-actuator response function into an in-plane contribution and an out-of-plane contribution. This in-plane coupling can limit the feedback control gains when a direct velocity feedback control is applied. A method called the j omega s compensation method is proposed to identify the effect of the in-plane vibration coupling at low frequencies. Even after this compensation, however, there was unexpected strong out-of-plane coupling at even modes, which may have been caused by a lack of accuracy in the shaping of the PVDF sensor and actuator. Numerical simulations have confirmed the sensitivity of the matched sensor/actuator pair with shaping errors.     

High-sensitivity, high-frequency extrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometric fiber-tip sensor based on a thin silver diaphragm

We propose and demonstrate a fiber-tip sensor based on an ultra-thin silver diaphragm for highly sensitive and high frequency ultrasonic detection. The diaphragm is prepared by the vacuum thermal deposition method and then transferred to the fiber tip. The sensor demonstrated in this letter has a 300 nm thick diaphragm with an inner diameter of 75 μm, leading to a static pressure sensitivity of 1.6 nm/kPa and a resonant frequency of 1.44 MHz. This sensor has potential applications in many fields such as structural health monitoring and medical ultrasonography.     

High-sensitivity Fabry-Perot interferometric pressure sensor based on a nanothick silver diaphragm

We present a fiber-optic extrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometer pressure sensor based on a nanothick silver diaphragm. The sensing diaphragm, with a thickness measured in a few hundreds of nanometers, is fabricated by the electroless plating method, which provides a simple fabrication process involving a high-quality diaphragm at a low cost. The sensor exhibits a relatively linear response within the pressure variation range of 0-50 kPa, with a high pressure sensitivity of 70.5 nm/kPa. This sensor is expected to have potential applications in the field of highly sensitive pressure sensors.     

Vibration testing based on impulse response excited by pulsed-laser ablation: Measurement of frequency response function with detection-free input

We have developed a non-contact vibration-measurement system that is based on impulse excitation by laser ablation (i.e. laser excitation) to measure the high-frequency-vibration characteristics of objects. The proposed method makes it possible to analyse the frequency response function just by measuring the output (acceleration response) of a test object excited by pulsed-laser ablation. This technique does not require detection of the input force. Firstly, using a rigid block, the pulsed-laser-ablation force is calibrated via Newton's second law. Secondly, an experiment is conducted in which an object whose natural frequency lies in the high-frequency domain is excited by pulsed-laser ablation. The complex frequency spectrum obtained by Fourier transform of the measured response is then divided by the estimated pulsed-laser-ablation force. Finally, because of the error involved in the trigger position of the response with respect to the impulse arrival time, the phase of the complex Fourier transform is modified by accounting for the response dead time. The result is the frequency response function of the object. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by a vibration test of an aluminium block.