Efficiency is a critical performance for a high-power ultrasonic transducer composed of 1-3 piezocomposites and geometric parameters of the composites can influence the efficiency of the transducer. The effect of inter-rod responses in the composite matrix on the efficiency was experimentally investigated in this study. For analyses, four PZT4-epoxy composite ultrasonic transducers with various volume fractions and inter-rod spacing were fabricated in-house. The experimental results demonstrated that the inter-rod coupling of the 0.1-mm spacing could significantly degrade the efficiency of the composite probe at about 1.0 MHz resonance since the 0.1-mm spacing between PZT4 rods was so small as to cause a high interference. At the same volume fraction, the transducer engineer should take the inter-rod coupling into account for the design of the high-power ultrasonic transducer.
