The Relationship of Cavitation to the Negative Acoustic Pressure Amplitude in Ultrasonic Therapy

The relationship between the cavitation and acoustic peak negative pressure in the high-intensity focused ultrasound （HIFU） field is analyzed in water and tissue phantom. The peak negative pressure at the focus is determined by a hybrid approach combining the measurement with the simulation. The spheroidal beam equation is utilized to describe the nonlinear acoustic propagation. The waveform at the focus is measured by a fiber optic probe hydrophone in water. The relationship between the source pressure amplitude and the excitation voltage is determined by fitting the measured ratio of the second harmonic to the fundamental component at the focus, based on the model simulation. Then the focal negative pressure is calculated for arbitrary voltage excita- tion in water and tissue phantom. A portable B-mode ultrasound scanner is applied to monitor HIFU-indueed cavitation in real time, and a passive cavitation detection （PCD） system is used to acquire the bubble scattering signals in the HIFU focal volume for the cavitation quantification. The results show that： （1） unstable cavitation starts to appear in degassed water when the peak negative pressure of HIFU signals reaches 13.5 MPa; and （2） the cavitation activity can be detected in tissue phantom by B-mode images and in the PCD system with HIFU peak negative pressures of 9.0 MPa and 7.8 MPa, respectively, which suggests that real-time B-mode images could be used to monitor the cavitation activity in two dimensions, while PCD systems are more sensitive to detect scattering and emission signals from cavitation bubbles.

Wear monitoring method of water-lubricated polymer thrust bearing based on ultrasonic reflection coefficient amplitude spectrum

The water-lubricated thrust bearings of the marine rim-driven thruster(RDT)are usually composed of polymer composites,which are prone to serious wear under harsh working conditions.Ultrasonic is an excellent non-destructive monitoring technology,but polymer materials are characterized by viscoelasticity,heterogeneity,and large acoustic attenuation,making it challenging to extract ultrasonic echo signals.Therefore,this paper proposes a wear monitoring method based on the amplitude spectrum of the ultrasonic reflection coefficient.The effects of bearing parameters,objective function,and algorithm parameters on the identification results are simulated and analyzed.Taking the correlation coefficient and root mean square error as the matching parameters,the thickness,sound velocity,density,and attenuation factor of the bearing are inversed simultaneously by utilizing the differential evolution algorithm(DEA),and the wear measurement system is constructed.In order to verify the identification accuracy of this method,an accelerated wear test under heavy load was executed on a multi-functional vertical water lubrication test rig with poly-ether-etherketone(PEEK)fixed pad and stainless-steel thrust collar as the object.The thickness of pad was measured using the high-precision spiral micrometer and ultrasonic testing system,respectively.Ultimately,the results demonstrate that the thickness identification error of this method is approximately 1%,and in-situ monitoring ability will be realized in the future,which is of great significance to the life prediction of bearings.

Temperature and pressure characteristics of ultrasonic transducer and the amplitude spectra correction of echoes

In this paper,the transfer functions of ultrasonic transducers under different temperatures are imitated according to Mason equivalent circuit. The relevant experiments are carried out. The results show that the transfer characteristic of ultrasonic transducer varies with temperature and pressure. Therefore, we present an approach to correct the amplitude spectra of ultrasonic echoes got in different temperature and pressure environmeots. The theoretical simulation and experimental results prove that the approach is simple, effective and practical.