Efficiency of Ultrasonic Comb Transducers

Comb transducers are applied in ultrasonic testing for generation of Rayleigh or
Lamb waves by scattering of the incident bulk waves onto surface waves at the pe-
riodic comb-substrate interface. Hence the transduction efficiency, although rarely
discussed in literature, is an important factor for applications determining the qual-
ity of the measured ultrasonic signals. This paper presents the full-wave theory of
comb transducers concluded by evaluation of their efficiency for a couple of examples
of standard and certain novel configurations.