In this paper, a comprehensive methodology for characterizing the high power resonance behavior of bulk piezoelectric ceramics using the burst method is described. In the burst method, the sample is electrically driven at its resonance frequency, and then either a short circuit or an open circuit condition is imposed, after which the vibration decays at the resonance or antiresonance frequency, respectively. This decay can be used to measure the quality factor in either of these conditions. The resulting current in the short circuit vibration condition is related to the vibration velocity through the “force factor.” The generated voltage in the open circuit vibration condition corresponds to the displacement by the “voltage factor.” The force factor and the voltage factor are related to material properties and physical dimensions of the sample. Using this method, the high power behavior of the permittivity, compliance, effective piezoelectric charge constant, electromechanical coupling factor, and material losses can be determined directly by measuring the resonance (short circuit) and antiresonance (open circuit) frequencies, their corresponding quality factors, the force factor A, and the voltage factor B. The experimental procedure to apply this method is described and demonstrated on commercially available hard and semi‐hard PZT materials of k31 geometry.

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Piezoelectric transducers are commonly operated at their resonance frequency. However, from a power dissipation standpoint, this is not the ideal driving frequency. In this paper, an optimized driving frequency in between the resonance and antiresonance frequencies is proposed for the piezo-transducer. First, the optimum driving frequency is characterized using a constant vibration velocity measurement method. The actual input power reveals the lowest power dissipation frequency between the resonance and the antiresonance frequencies, where the transducer behaves inductive. The electrical parameters of the transducer are then determined by an equivalent circuit formulation, which is useful for the electrical circuit analysis of the driver design. A Class E resonant inverter is used to design a capacitive output impedance driver at the optimized frequency by utilizing a series capacitor. Compared with the traditional resonance drive, driving at the optimized frequency reduces the required power by approximately half according to the measurements performed.

Dielectric, elastic, and piezoelectric constants, and their corresponding losses are defined under constant conditions of two categories; namely, intensive (i.e., E, electric field or T, stress), and extensive (i.e., D, dielectric displacement or x, strain) ones. So far, only the intensive parameters and losses could be measured directly in a k31 mode sample. Their corresponding extensive parameters could be calculated indirectly using the coupling factor and “K” matrix. However, the extensive loss parameters, calculated through this indirect method, could have large uncertainty, due to the error propagation in calculation. In order to overcome this issue, extensive losses should be measured separately from the measurable intensive ones in lead-zirconate-titanate (PZT) k31 mode rectangular plate ceramics. We propose a new mechanical-excitation methodology, using a non-destructive testing approach by means of a partial electrode configuration, instead of the conventional full electrode configuration. For this purpose, a non-electrode sample was prepared, where the electrode covered only 10% of the top and bottom surfaces at the center to actuate the whole sample, and also monitor the responding vibration. The admittance spectrum of this sample, corresponds to PZT properties under dielectric displacement D constant condition. Furthermore, ceramics with partial-electrodes were also prepared to create short and open circuit boundary conditions, attributing to resonance and anti-resonance modes. In the proposed way, we were able to measure both intensive and extensive elastic compliances and mechanical losses directly for the first time. The accuracy of this new method is compared with the conventional measurements by use of indirect calculations. The preliminary results (by neglecting the 10% actuator part difference at this point) were obtained, which were in good agreements (less than 3% difference) with the previous indirect method.

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