New type transducer for measuring contact compliances of a soft body Available to Purchase

A new type transducer for measuring a contact compliance or a contact resonance is described. The instrument is very different from conventional electrodynamic vibrometers which consist of a moving coil and a loudspeaker magnet. The old instruments exert a greater influence on the contact resonance of a soft body, because they have a heavy driver unit. In order to minimize elastic deformations of a test material on which the transducer rests, the new transducer is designed to operate with a piezoelectric disk which is employed as the driver unit. Therefore, the piezoelectric transducer proposed here is small, light, and consumes very little electricity. In addition, by using the piezoelectric vibrator technique, experimental investigations are conducted to deduce the characteristics of the contact resonance of a soft body such as foam rubber.