Optimum Driving of Ultrasonic Cleaner Using Impedance and FFT Analysis with Validation of Image Processing of Perforated Foils

Featured Application Ultrasonic cleaners are widely used in the cleaning of surgical instruments, automobile parts, jewellery, fruits and vegetable, and in chemical synthesis. Over the past decade, ultrasonic cleaners have been widely used in many industries. Now, this technology is finding its way into homes for vegetable, fruit, and clothes cleaning. In widely used ultrasonic cleaners, piezoelectric transducers are externally attached to the steel tank to generate ultrasonic waves inside the tank. Based on the impedance data of the piezoelectric transducers, the driving circuit was tuned to generate the required frequencies inside the cleaning tank. This paper discusses the design, development, and validation of an 800 mL tank capacity ultrasonic cleaner driven with a piezoelectric disc actuator. To achieve an optimum cleaning action without surface abrasion, several characteristics need to be considered in this complex relationship. The placement of transducers has been investigated according to the pressure distribution inside the liquid medium. The optimized ultrasonic cleaner design, along with a class-D half-bridge circuit, was developed to drive the ultrasonic transducer in the resonance frequency range. To validate the optimal design and driving frequency, the acoustic spectrum generated inside the tank was measured using a piezoelectric sensor and FFT analysis was performed. To validate the cleaning effect, a qualitative test based on aluminuim foil perforations was performed. The perforation area in the foils was quantitatively measured using image processing based on the YOLO V5 technique. The proposed image processing technique has an accuracy of 97 % in the detection of perforation areas in the aluminuim foil test.