Miniature conical transducer for acoustic emission measurement

Abstract

A miniature conical transducer with an aperture size of 0.2 mm has been successfully fabricated based on excimer-laser micro-machining technique. Specially-designed laser masks and a stage-rotation method have been used for directly machining a thin PZT ceramic sheet into a cone-shape piezoelectric element of the mini-conical transducer. The transducer thus fabricated has been tested experimentally to characterize its performance as an acoustic emission transducer. Good results are obtained.