Author:
Yuan Jiawei,Li Zhikang,Ma Qi,Li Jie,Li Zixuan,Zhao Yihe,Qin Shaohui,Shi Xuan,Zhao Libo,Yang Ping,Luo Guoxi,Wang Xiaozhang,Teh Kwok Siong,Jiang Zhuangde
Abstract
AbstractUltrasonic fluid bubble detection is important in industrial controls, aerospace systems and clinical medicine because it can prevent fatal mechanical failures and threats to life. However, current ultrasonic technologies for bubble detection are based on conventional bulk PZT-based transducers, which suffer from large size, high power consumption and poor integration with ICs and thus are unable to implement real-time and long-term monitoring in tight physical spaces, such as in extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) systems and dialysis machines or hydraulic systems in aircraft. This work highlights the prospect of capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers (CMUTs) in the aforementioned application situations based on the mechanism of received voltage variation caused by bubble-induced acoustic energy attenuation. The corresponding theories are established and well validated using finite element simulations. The fluid bubbles inside a pipe with a diameter as small as 8 mm are successfully measured using our fabricated CMUT chips with a resonant frequency of 1.1 MHz. The received voltage variation increases significantly with increasing bubble radii in the range of 0.5–2.5 mm. Further studies show that other factors, such as bubble positions, flow velocities, fluid medium types, pipe thicknesses and diameters, have negligible effects on fluid bubble measurement, demonstrating the feasibility and robustness of the CMUT-based ultrasonic bubble detection technique.
Funder
National Natural Science Foundation of China
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Subject
Electrical and Electronic Engineering,Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering,Condensed Matter Physics,Materials Science (miscellaneous),Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
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