Under Water Sonar Transducer Using Terfenol - D Magnetostrictive Material

In this work we have constructed an under water sonar transducer using Terfenol-D rod employing open magnetic circuit. Normally Sonar transducer using Terfenol-D was designed under closed magnetic flux return path, and permanent magnet for dc bias marnetic field, but high magnetic field should be applied to the transducer coil for high sound power and it brings temperature increase inside of the transducer. To improve this heat dissipation problem, we have designed an open magnetic circuit type transducer and we can get 200 dB (re. 1 μPa @ 1m) sound power for the input power of 650 VA.