Effects of vibration excitation methodology and configuration of an acoustic needle on its tip vibration.

One of design purposes of an acoustic needle is to obtain a big vibration displacement at its tip. In this paper, vibration characteristics of the tip of the acoustic needle driven by a sandwich type ultrasonic transducer, is investigated to obtain the guidelines for increasing the tip vibration. It is found that the tip vibration can be increased by employing acoustic needles with proper vibration excitation structure and configuration. The effective measures include using a sandwich type piezoelectric transducer with flexurally vibrating end plates and an acoustic needle with conical tip section, decreasing the length of vibration excitation section at the needle root, bonding the needle root at a proper location of the transducer end plate, and tuning the length ratio of the conical tip section to the whole needle.