Simulation of ultrasonic transducer for plastic welding system using finite element method

Ultrasonic transducers combine coupling elements such as bolt, piezoelectric disk, back mass, and front mass. The quality and performance of the transducer greatly influence the quality of the ultrasonic weld. The design of a transducer requires good coordination with the design of other components such as bolt, piezoelectric disk, back mass, front mass, and sometimes booster, and horn. There have been many studies presenting how to build models for transducer design. However, there are not many articles presenting the design and simulation of transducers using finite element models. This paper will present a finite element model to simulate the coordination of all the above components. The influence of the interaction creation methods of the elements as well as the influence of the choice of bolt load on the predicted axial resonance frequency. In addition, the model also considers whether the simplification of some factors on the elements in the simulation affects the simulation results. The dynamic properties of the transducer obtained from the simulation model will be verified by experiment. The results show that the choice of host surface and slave surface in the interaction affects the simulation results. Meanwhile, the simplification of some parts also has a significant effect on the simulation results. The results of the calculation of longitudinal resonance frequency from the simulation are compared with the results obtained from the experiment and are very consistent with each other.