2015 IEEE International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM)

July 7-11, 2015. Busan, Korea

High power ultrasonic transducer with LLCC resonant converter

using digital control algorithm

Dong-Keun Jeong, Jong-Hyun Kim, Ho-Sung Kim, Ju-Won Baek and Hee-Je Kim

Abstract— A variety of applications using ultrasonic

transducer is operating at high power in a low frequency range
in industry. The resonance frequency shift and electrical
impedance change is a common phenomenon in the application
of high-power ultrasonic transducer. In order to achieve a
stable or consistent results, it is important to track the
resonance frequency. To solve these problems, various electrical
methods have been described to track the operating frequency.
This paper proposes ultrasonic transducer drive system and a
simple digital control algorithm for sonicating aluminum alloy.
The ultrasound transducer drive system is implemented to
verify the proposed digital control algorithm. The proposed Fig. 1. The proposed ultrasound transducer drive system
digital control algorithm is applied to a 3 kW prototype
ultrasound transducer drive system, and the experimental
results are analyzed and verified. ultrasonic transducer, a digital control algorithm is proposed
for the drive system is implemented to verify the proposed
I. INTRODUCTION digital control algorithm which consists of AC/DC rectifier,
DC/DC converter, Square waveform generator, and RLC
Recently, the ultrasonic transducer is widely used in a matching circuit. An experiment was performed to verify the
variety of applications in industry. Most of these systems are performance of the proposed digital control algorithm using a
operating at high power in a low frequency range. For the high 3 kW prototype ultrasound transducer drive system.
power conversion efficiency, it is important to drive the
transducer at its resonant frequency. The electrical behavior of II. ULTRASOUND TRANSDUCER DRIVE SYSTEM
ultrasound transducer is influenced by several factors. The
resonant frequency of the ultrasonic transducers may vary
The proposed ultrasonic transducer drive system consists
depending on the input power and self-heating during
operation [1]. Therefore, in order to achieve a stable or of a grid-connected AC/DC rectifier, a phase shift full-bridge
consistent results, it is important to track the resonance DC/DC converter, a LLCC resonant converter and the
frequency [2]. This paper applies the ultrasonic transducer to ultrasonic transducer as shown in Fig. 1. The AC/DC rectifier
the aluminum alloy. The high power ultrasonic transducer is is applied to 3kW Bridgeless PFC rectifier due to high
required for sonicating to aluminum alloy. It is necessary to efficiency. The Bridgeless PFC rectifier regulates 380Vdc. In
increase the amplification factor of vibration. In order to addition, the phase shift full-bridge DC/DC converter
increase the amplification factor of vibration, the ultrasonic converts 380Vdc to 300Vdc at 3kW. A full-bridge circuit is
transducer should be combined a Piezoelectric, Booster and formed for generating a square waveform. RLC matching
Sonotrode. However, by coupling additional equipment, the circuit is composed of a LLCC resonant circuit in order to
available resonant region of the ultrasonic transducer is reduce a change of the gain. In addition, compared to a LC
reduced. resonant converter a much smaller capacitance is sufficient to
Various electrical methods have been reported to track the stabilize the voltage under similar conditions [6].
operating frequency in the vicinity of the resonance frequency
A. LLCC resonant converter
of the ultrasonic transducer. An analog phase-locked loop
(PLL) is the most commonly used [3-5]. In order to achieve Topology and the ultrasound transducer RLC model of the
the desired effects, it uses a vibrating metal probe to contact LLCC resonant converter is shown in Fig. 2. The factor fres is
the the series resonant frequency of the ultrasound transducer (1).
-target tissue. Due to the narrowed available area, it becomes
difficult to control using PID controller using vibrating metal
probe. In addition, the system becomes complex and (1)
expensive. In this paper, in order to simple the control of the

978-1-4673-9107-8/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE 1686

 Overcurrent control I/O
LLCC resonant converter
Iref_1 +
U1 I1
S1 S2 -
Frequency sweep level I/O
CPU LLCC resonant
Iref_2 +
Cs Ls Lm +
U2 I2 Frequency
converter
IS
Ultrasonic transducer
Current sensing - sweep +
Ultrasonic
&
- Control transducer
Frequency sweep & control I/O
Lp Cc Cp Cm Ultrasonic transducer
Iref_3 + Current sensing
U3 I3 - IS +
-
S3 S4 Rm
Fig. 3. The proposed digital controller block diagram

Ultrasonic transducer RLC model

Fig. 2. The proposed ultrasound transducer drive system

More suitable conditions are obtained by using a capacitor

Cc for compensation in parallel to the ultrasound transducer,
which reduces the impedance of the resulting loading system
[7]. The factor β has been found that a large capacitance value
required for the stabilization of the output voltage (2).

(2)
Design of a parallel resonant circuit performs with the
given capacitances Cp and Cc (3), and the design of the series
Fig. 4. The proposed digital control algorithm
resonance circuit is implemented using Ls-Cs (4-5). The
position of both resonant peaks is fixed by factor α. This
allows a design of the output filters in a way that the voltage - down the frequency sweep speed to 2.7Hz. If the output of
gain becomes 1 in a wide range at a phase angle of 0. U3 is low, the digital controller check the output of U1. The
output of U1 is low. The operating frequency increase for
2.7Hz due to over current. On the contrary, the output of U1 is
(3) high, the digital controller stops the frequency sweep and
operates at a fixed frequency.
(4)
III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

(5) A. The proposed digital control algorithm results

B. The proposed digital control algorithm

The digital controller of the ultrasound transducer sensing
the current compares with three different reference values
(Iref_3, Iref_2, Iref_1) as shown Fig. 3. Iref_3 is a reference
value for determining that the ultrasonic transducer has
controlled a steady state. Iref_2 is a reference value before
reaching a steady state, Iref_2 is set to be smaller than Iref_3.
It is necessary to sweep the frequency efficiently. Iref_1 is set
to be larger than Iref_3, Iref_1 required to prevent the
over-current. The digital controller is operated on the basis of
the result of comparing the three reference value and current
sensing value as shown in Fig. 4. If the output of U3 is high,
the output current is considered as before to reach the steady
state. Thus, the digital controller check the output of U2. If the
output of U2 is high, the frequency sweep is 27Hz units
Fig. 5. Prototype of ultrasonic transducer drive system
quickly. When the output of U2 is low, the digital controller
determines that approaches the steady state and slow

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 The ultrasound transducer drive system and ultrasonic Iref_3 signal (5V/div)
transducer applied to digital control algorithm is composed as
shown in Fig. 5. The ultrasound transducer RLC model Output Voltage (100V/div)
19.6kHz
parameter and the design of LLCC resonant converter are
shown in Table 1. In Fig. 6, the digital controller of the
ultrasonic transducer drive system starts to operate in 25kHz.
The digital controller rapidly sweeps the frequency to 27Hz,
and slows down the frequency sweep to 2.7Hz. If the output of
U3 is low, the digital controller will stop the frequency sweep
and operate at a fixed frequency as shown in Fig. 7. Fig. 8
shows that operates in steady state. Output Current (2A/div)

Current sensing (5V/div) 100us/div

Ultrasound Transducer Parameter

Cp 48.7nF Lm 633mH
Fig. 8. Steady state operation waveform
Cm 95.2pF Rm 34.4Ω
LLCC Design Parameter
α 1.2 β 4.5
Ls 269.6μH Cs 220nF
Lp 224.7μH Cc 220nF

TABLE I. DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS OF LLCC

Iref_3 signal (5V/div)

Output Voltage (100V/div) 25kHz

Fig. 9. Aluminum alloy microstructure before sonication

Output Current (2A/div)

Current sensing (5V/div) 100us/div

Fig. 6. Initial operation waveform at 25kHz

Frequency Frequency
Output Voltage (100V/div) Sweep Sweep Iref_3 signal (5V/div)
27Hz 2.7Hz
Steady
State

Output Current (2A/div) Fig. 10. Aluminum alloy microstructure after sonication

Current sensing (5V/div) 20ms/div B. The sonicated aluminum alloy results

Fig. 9 show the aluminum alloy microstructure before
Fig. 7. Experimental result of frequency sweep
sonication. Its primary Si size is 41.60 μ m. By ultrasonic

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treatment, the primary Si size becomes smaller at the 23.11μm
as shown in Fig. 10. In addition, a roundness was increased
from 0.4 to 0.51, a volume fraction was reduce to 7.3 vol.%
from 9.39 vol.%. At the tensile test results, the tensile strength
was increased to 258 ± 10.6N/mm2 from 203 ±18.2N/mm2.
The yield strength was also increased to 193 ± 0.6N/mm2 from
192 ±5.3N/mm2. And, the elongation was increased to 1±
0.3% from 0.6± 0.1%.

IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper, in order to achieve a stable or consistent
results, this paper proposes ultrasonic transducer drive
system and a simple digital control algorithm for sonicating
aluminum. The digital controller of the ultrasound transducer
sensing the current compares with three different reference
values. According to three different reference values, and the
frequency sweep and control. The ultrasound transducer
drive system is implemented to verify the proposed digital
control algorithm. An experiment was performed to verify the
performance of the proposed digital control algorithm using a
3 kW prototype ultrasound transducer drive system. At the
sonicated aluminum alloy results, the aluminum alloy
microstructure was more refinement. The tensile strength,
yield strength and elongation were generally increased in the
tensile test results.

REFERENCES
[1] A. Ramos-Fernandez et al., Automatic system for dynamic control of
resonance in high power and high Q ultrasonic transducers, Ultrasonics
23 (1985) 151–156.
[2] D. Hui-juan et al., Automatic stablization of velocity for ultrasonic
vibration system, Journal of Harbin Institute of Technology 8 (2001) 5.
[3] C. Gokcek, Tracking the resonance frequency of a series RLC circuit
using a phase locked loop, in control applications, 2003. CCA 2003, in:
Proceedings of 2003 IEEE Conference on 2003, vol. 1, pp. 609–613.
[4] F.-J. Lin, R.-Y. Duan, H.-H. Lin, “An Ultrasonic Motor Drive Using
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[5] M. Crivii, M. Jufer, "DC to AC Converter for Piezoelectric Motors."
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[7] Schulte, Thomas, Norbert Fröhleke, and Christopher Kauczor.
"Resonant Power Converter for Ultrasonic Piezoelectric Converter."
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10-12 June 2002, Bremen Germany, S. 485-488.

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