The piezoelectric and magnetostrictive effects which drive ultrasonic transducers are capable of creating considerable force but only minimal displacement. In order to produce sound waves of sufficient amplitude (displacement) to cause cavitation in a liquid, some means must be used to increase the displacement produced by the primary piezoelectric or magnetostrictive effect. In both cases, the key to doing …
At the heart of any ultrasonic transducer is a means to convert electrical energy into mechanical energy. The use of piezoelectric materials to do this was discussed in a previous blog. Today’s blog will describe how magnetostrictive materials can also be used to convert electrical energy into mechanical energy. Ultrasonic transducers using magnetostriction as a source of …
Today, the vast majority of transducers used for ultrasonic cleaning applications utilize the “piezoelectric” effect to transform electrical energy to mechanical motion. These devices are sometimes called “piezos” because they are driven by piezoelectric elements which are integral to the transducer. Piezoelectricity was discovered by Maria and Pierre Curie who also experimented with radioactivity and …
I have been spending a lot of time on the blog lately talking about the effects of sound waves. Today’s blog starts a series devoted to the way ultrasound is created and how it can be customized to provide the best ultrasonic cleaning results. The heart of an ultrasonic cleaning system is a device called …
The concept of a barrier layer in ultrasonic cleaning can be a little difficult to understand – in fact, a lot of people don’t even know what “barrier layer” means. In this blog, I’ll attempt to describe what the barrier layer is and how the thickness of the barrier layer is affected by changing ultrasonic frequency. The …
A reader has asked for a description of how “near field” ultrasonics works. First of all, the term “near field” is one that is not well defined in the ultrasonic cleaning world. For the purpose of this discussion regarding ultrasonic cleaning, “near field” means putting the ultrasonic source close to the work piece. It may …
A previous blog Cleaning – Soluble Contaminants – “Solvents” described soluble contaminants as those contaminants that can be dissolved using a solvent or engineered liquid such as a surfactant. Contaminants that are not soluble are the other distinct classification of contaminants. Sometimes the line between soluble and insoluble is not well defined since there are …
In the blog entitled The Lowdown on Dirt, the three basic classes of contaminants were described. They are – soluble, particulate and a mixture of soluble and particulate. There are, of course many hybrids and permutations but for purposes of discussing the ultrasonic effect on cleaning we’ll limit to these three for now. Later on we can …
Sound waves produced by multiple sources, or even within a single source in some cases, interact with one another to produce a variety of interesting and useful results. These interactions are commonly referred to as “interference” but one should not automatically conclude that this kind of interference is in any way related to the interference …
The speed at which sound travels through a sound conducting media varies depending on the media. In general, sound travels faster in liquids than it does in gasses. Solids are the best conductors of all beating out both liquids and gasses. The speed at which sound travels through most materials depends on several variables including …
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