A Virtual Instrument for Measuring the Piezoelectric Coefficients of a Thin Disc in Radial Resonant Mode

Francisco Javier Jiménez; Amador M González; Lorena Pardo; Manuel Vázquez-Rodríguez; Pilar Ochoa; Bernardino González

doi:10.3390/s21124107

A Virtual Instrument for Measuring the Piezoelectric Coefficients of a Thin Disc in Radial Resonant Mode

Sensors (Basel). 2021 Jun 15;21(12):4107. doi: 10.3390/s21124107.

Authors

Francisco Javier Jiménez¹, Amador M González¹, Lorena Pardo², Manuel Vázquez-Rodríguez³, Pilar Ochoa¹, Bernardino González⁴

Affiliations

¹ Departamento de Electrónica-Física, Ingeniería Eléctrica y Física Aplicada, Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería y Sistemas de Telecomunicación (ETSIST-Campus Sur UPM), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28031 Madrid, Spain.
² Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid (ICMM), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), C/Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, 3. Cantoblanco, 28049 Madrid, Spain.
³ Departamento de Ingeniería Telemática y Electrónica, Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería y Sistemas de Telecomunicación (ETSIST-Campus Sur UPM), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28031 Madrid, Spain.
⁴ Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería y Sistemas de Telecomunicación (ETSIST-Campus Sur UPM), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28031 Madrid, Spain.

Abstract

In this paper, we describe and present a Virtual Instrument, a tool that allows the determination of the electromechanical, dielectric, and elastic coefficients in polarised ferroelectric ceramic discs (piezoceramics) in the linear range, including all of the losses when the piezoceramics are vibrating in radial mode. There is no evidence in the recent scientific literature of any automatic system conceived and implemented as a Virtual Instrument based on an iterative algorithm issued as an alternative to solve the limitations of the ANSI IEEE 176 standard for the characterisation of piezoelectric coefficients of thin discs in resonant mode. The characterisation of these coefficients is needed for the design of ultrasonic sensors and generators. In 1995, two of the authors of this work, together with other authors, published an iterative procedure that allowed for the automatic determination of the complex constants for lossy piezoelectric materials in radial mode. As described in this work, the procedures involved in using a Virtual Instrument have been improved: the response time for the characterisation of a piezoelectric sample is shorter (approximately 5 s); the accuracy in measurement and, therefore, in the estimates of the coefficients has been increased; the calculation speed has been increased; an intuitive, simple, and friendly user interface has been designed, and tools have been provided for exporting and inspecting the measured and processed data. No Virtual Instrument has been found in the recent scientific literature that has improved on the iterative procedure designed in 1995. This Virtual Instrument is based on the measurement of a unique magnitude, the electrical admittance (Y = G + iB) in the frequency range of interest. After measuring the electrical admittance, estimates of the set of piezoelectric coefficients of the device are obtained. The programming language used in the construction of the Virtual Instrument is LabVIEW 2019^®.

Keywords: LabVIEW 2019®; Virtual Instrumentation; piezoceramics; piezoelectric sensors; resonators.