Research on propagation characteristics of guided wave in rail excited by low-frequency piezoelectric transducer

Abstract

This short paper introduced the piezoelectric sandwich transducer and obtained the vibration ratio between the front and back metal covers according to the electromechanical equivalent circuit derived by force and electric analogy method. The transducer's resonance frequency is calculated using MATLAB programming, following by an experiment performed on a 1.5m long 50kg / m rail under laboratory conditions. The rail's equivalent damped loss factor was measured and the attenuation curve was plotted using a sandwich transducer and a 352C33 low frequency acceleration sensor as excitation and receiving units respectively.