Additive Manufactured Tessellated Acoustic Backing
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional methods for fabricating backing materials for ultrasound transducers are costly and inefficient, with additive manufacturing facing challenges due to large data sets that slow down system controllers and require rebooting, and existing materials do not effectively tune acoustic and thermal properties for variations in ultrasonic signal intensity and frequency.
Innovation Solution
The use of additive manufacturing to form backing materials in stacked, tessellated layers with alternating geometric patterns, such as hexagons, squares, and triangles, to create a meta-structure that enhances acoustic attenuation and thermal conductivity, allowing for efficient data storage and execution of instructions.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If additive manufacturing is used to fabricate backing materials, then manufacturing flexibility and acoustic property tuning are improved, but data set complexity increases causing system controller slowdown and requiring reboots
Solution Approach 1:
The backing material is divided into multiple stacked layers, each with distinct tessellation patterns (e.g., hexagons, squares, triangles). This segmentation allows the complex acoustic attenuation function to be distributed across simpler individual layers, reducing the data complexity for any single layer while maintaining overall performance through the cumulative effect of all layers.
Solution Approach 2:
Different regions of the backing material have different tessellation patterns optimized for specific acoustic properties. Each layer can be independently designed with local variations in pattern geometry and arrangement, allowing precise tuning of acoustic attenuation at different depths without requiring the entire structure to be optimized as one complex unit.
2Adaptability or versatility
If conventional materials are used for backing, then manufacturing simplicity is maintained, but acoustic attenuation and thermal conductivity cannot be effectively tuned for signal variations
Solution Approach 1:
The backing material is constructed as a composite structure combining multiple materials with different acoustic and thermal properties in stacked layers. This allows effective tuning of overall acoustic attenuation and thermal conductivity by selecting and arranging materials with complementary properties, achieving performance that cannot be obtained with conventional homogeneous materials.
Solution Approach 2:
The backing material incorporates porous structures with controlled void fractions and pore size distributions. These porous features enhance acoustic attenuation through scattering and absorption mechanisms while maintaining thermal conductivity pathways. The porosity can be tuned independently in different layers to optimize the balance between acoustic and thermal properties.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This approach reduces the complexity of data sets, enhances acoustic diffusivity and impedance matching with piezoelectric crystals, and improves thermal conductivity, leading to improved axial resolution and signal-to-noise ratio while reducing manufacturing costs.
Implementation Method 1
a backing configured to control a bandwidth, temporal resolution, and a sensitivity of the ultrasound probe... the backing material may have an acoustic impedance lower than that of an active element of the transducer that generates the ultrasonic signal and may be configured with acoustic attenuating properties
Implementation Method 2
the backing including a layer having a tessellation pattern... enhances acoustic diffusivity
Implementation Method 3
the backing material may be thermally conductive to aid in dissipating heat generated in the ultrasound probe
Data Source
AI summary
Various methods and systems are provided for fabricating a backing material for an acoustic probe. In one example, the backing material may include an additively manufactured meta-structure formed from layers of a tessellation pattern. A geometry of the tessellation pattern and an alignment of the layers may affect acoustic properties of the backing material.