Folded Resonant Horns for Power Ultrasonic Applications

Folded horns have been conceived as alternatives to straight horns used as resonators and strain amplifiers in power ultrasonic systems. Such systems are used for cleaning, welding, soldering, cutting, and drilling in a variety of industries. In addition, several previous NASA Tech Briefs articles have described instrumented drilling, coring, and burrowing machines that utilize combinations of sonic and ultrasonic vibrational actuation. The main advantage of a folded horn, relative to a straight horn of the same resonance frequency, is that the folded horn can be made shorter (that is, its greatest linear dimension measured from the outside can be made smaller). Alternatively, for a given length, the resonance frequency can be reduced. Hence, the folded-horn concept affords an additional degree of design freedom for reducing the length of an ultrasonic power system that includes a horn.