Irradiation Testing of Piezoelectric (Aluminum Nitride, Zinc Oxide, and Bismuth Titanate) and Magnetostrictive Sensors (Remendur and Galfenol)

Reinhardt, Brian; Daw, Joshua; Tittmann, Bernhard R.

doi:10.1109/tns.2017.2775163

Cited by 36 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Irradiation studies of ultrasonic transducers have been described in the literature but are generally at lower flux/fluences than what might be seen in U.S. nuclear reactors. The Pennsylvania State University (PSU) lead an effort that was selected by the Advanced Test Reactor National Scientific User Facility (ATR-NSUF) for an irradiation of ultrasonic transducers in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Nuclear Research Reactor (MITR) [32,33]. This test was an instrumented-lead test, allowing real-time signals to be received from five ultrasonic transducers including three piezoelectric transducers two of which were single-crystal wafers of aluminum nitride.…”

Section: Piezoelectric Materials For Radiation Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The irradiation began on February 20th, 2014 and was scheduled to run for a period of 18 months or until all the sensors have ceased to operate. Recent results are presented and discussed in detail in References [32,33]. In searching for candidate materials for use in harsh environments, the most straightforward down selection parameter seems to be the transition temperature, which provides an upper limit on the operating range of the piezoelectric material.…”

Section: Piezoelectric Materials For Radiation Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A table of candidate materials for longitudinal wave generation is provided below in Table 3; however, this is only the first step. The final column in Table 3 is of substantial importance as it has been found that crystal structure plays a significant role in radiation tolerance of ceramics [33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73,74].…”

Section: Piezoelectric Materials For Radiation Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Here, only the two most likely damage mechanisms are summarized, namely thermal spikes and displacement spikes [33]. Additionally, transmutation products are considered, as these in fact induce both thermal spikes and displacement spikes in some cases.…”

Section: Piezoelectric Materials For Radiation Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…During the past decades there has been significant interest and therefore research into the problem of ultrasonic transducers for harsh environments [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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State-of-the-Art and Practical Guide to Ultrasonic Transducers for Harsh Environments Including Temperatures above 2120 °F (1000 °C) and Neutron Flux above 1013 n/cm2

Tittmann

Batista

Trivedi

et al. 2019

Sensors

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In field applications currently used for health monitoring and nondestructive testing, ultrasonic transducers primarily employ PZT5-H as the piezoelectric element for ultrasound transmission and detection. This material has a Curie–Weiss temperature that limits its use to about 210 °C. Some industrial applications require much higher temperatures, i.e., 1000–1200 °C and possible nuclear radiation up to 1020 n/cm2 when performance is required in a reactor environment. The goal of this paper is the survey and review of piezoelectric elements for use in harsh environments for the ultimate purpose for structural health monitoring (SHM), non-destructive evaluation (NDE) and material characterization (NDMC). The survey comprises the following categories: 1. High-temperature applications with single crystals, thick-film ceramics, and composite ceramics, 2. Radiation-tolerant materials, and 3. Spray-on transducers for harsh-environment applications. In each category the known characteristics are listed, and examples are given of performance in harsh environments. Highlighting some examples, the performance of single-crystal lithium niobate wafers is demonstrated up to 1100 °C. The wafers with the C-direction normal to the wafer plane were mounted on steel cylinders with high-temperature Sauereisen and silver paste wire mountings and tested in air. In another example, the practical use in harsh radiation environments aluminum nitride (AlN) was found to be a good candidate operating well in two different nuclear reactors. The radiation hardness of AlN was evident from the unaltered piezoelectric coefficient after a fast and thermal neutron exposure in a nuclear reactor core (thermal flux = 2.12 × 1013 ncm−2; fast flux 2 (>1.0 MeV) = 4.05 × 1013 ncm−2; gamma dose rate: 1 × 109 r/h; temperature: 400–500 °C). Additionally, some of the high-temperature transducers are shown to be capable of mounting without requiring coupling material. Pulse-echo signal amplitudes (peak-to-peak) for the first two reflections as a function of the temperature for lithium niobate thick-film, spray-on transducers were observed to temperatures of about 900 °C. Guided-wave send-and-receive operation in the 2–4 MHz range was demonstrated on 2–3 mm thick Aluminum (6061) structures for possible field deployable applications where standard ultrasonic coupling media do not survive because of the harsh environment. This approach would benefit steam generators and steam pipes where temperatures are above 210 °C. In summary, there are several promising approaches to ultrasonic transducers for harsh environments and this paper presents a survey based on literature searches and in-house laboratory observations.

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Section: Piezoelectric Materials For Radiation Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Piezoelectric Materials For Radiation Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%