Patent ID: 11906293
Assignee: PEPPERL+FUCHS SE
Field: Measurement (Instruments)
Classification: CPC G  B | IPC B  G

Claim 0:
1. A 1D ultrasonic transducer unit for material detection, the transducer unit comprising:
a housing comprising a communication interface;
at least three ultrasonic transducers, each ultrasonic transducer being designed to emit and/or to receive a sound wave with a consistent working frequency; and
a control unit adapted to control each ultrasonic transducer individually,
wherein each ultrasonic transducer comprises a transducer housing, a piezoelectric body disposed in the transducer housing, and a sound decoupling layer disposed at an open end of the transducer housing for decoupling sound waves in a gaseous medium, and is disposed at a fixed position in the housing,
wherein the working frequency of the sound waves is in a range from 20 kHz to 400 kHz,
wherein, two ultrasonic transducers, directly adjacent to one another, in the housing are spaced apart by a distance from a center of the sound decoupling layer to a center of the sound decoupling layer of at most 10 cm,
wherein the 1D ultrasonic transducer unit comprises one sound channel per ultrasonic transducer,
wherein each sound channel comprises an input opening and an output opening,
wherein exactly one of the input openings is associated with each sound decoupling layer,
wherein the output openings are each arranged in a wall of the housing, or the sound channels penetrate the wall of the housing,
wherein a distance from a center of one of the output openings to a center of a directly adjacent output opening corresponds at most to a wavelength in the gaseous medium or at most to half a wavelength in the gaseous medium,
wherein a distance between two directly adjacent output openings is in each case smaller than a distance between the ultrasonic transducers associated with the corresponding input openings,
wherein each sound channel has at least a length corresponding to a diameter of the input opening,
wherein the housing comprises a securing device for securing to a surface,
wherein the control unit is at least partially disposed in the housing,
wherein the housing comprises a movable cover device designed to close the output openings of all sound channels, and
wherein a width of the output opening is smaller than a width of the corresponding input opening and a height of the output opening is greater than a height of the corresponding input opening.