FURI | Spring 2025

Design Automation for Ultrasonic Transducer Cooling

The current limitation of power ultrasonics in vacuum environments is primarily thermal management of the transducer, which proves complicated due to the contact limitations imposed by the nature of the transducer as a freely oscillating mass. This restricts the operational window of power ultrasonic devices, putting a barrier on promising ISAM technologies. This project aims to create design automation to design flexure cooling structures that replace the existing electrodes in a piezoelectric transducer. The design automation will leverage implicit modeling to efficiently simulate mechanical and thermal conditions, lattice structures accordingly, check for proper resonance, and export a manufacturable design. This method would allow for extended testing of ultrasonics in vacuum environments, as well as fast adoption of new or modified transducer designs.