Design and simulation of an array consisted of Tonpilz transducers with protective coating materials

In this research, a 3×3 active sonar array consisted of Tonpilz transducers with the common protective coating materials, i.e. polyurethane, corprene, silicone rubber and neoprene has been simulated by COMSOL Multiphysics finite-element software, where the simulation results, including the important characteristics of a sonar array have been analysed and compared. These characteristics include Transmitting Voltage Response (TVR), beam pattern, total radiated power, and Receiving Voltage Sensitivity (RVS). The array coating materials cover major tasks in arrays, one of them is to prevent water and contaminants from entering into the chamber of the array. The performance characteristics of the array with the coating differ significantly with respect to the uncoated one; hence, their investigation and analysis is crucially vital. The simulation results indicated that at the presence of protective coating materials in arrays, the TVR and RVS are reduced in comparison with the uncoated ones while the most reduction in TVR and RVS belongs to neoprene respectively 1.4% and 2.2%. The resonance frequency of the array with the silicone rubber protective layer was measured to be 32 kHz which is the greatest with to the other coating materials. It was also found that the coating materials have no effect on beam width, but increase the band width of the array. Neoprene exhibited the greatest increase in band width as much as 5 kHz.