Suppression of lateral vibration in rectangular ultrasonic plastic welding tool based on phononic crystal structure

Ultrasonic welding is one of the main applications of high-power ultrasound and is used in the automotive industry and aerospace. Transducers and tool are important parts of the ultrasonic welding system. Different tools are required for different welding objects. For larger plastic welded parts, it is necessary to weld them with large-sized welding tools. Due to the large size of the welding tool, under the excitation of the transducer, the tool will produce a coupling effect of longitudinal vibration and lateral vibration. Lateral vibration will cause the radiation surface of the tool to be non-uniformly displaced, and the working efficiency and welding results of the welding system will also be affected. So, in this paper, the phononic crystal bandgap theory and coupling vibration theory are used to study the coupled vibration of large-sized rectangular plastic ultrasonic welding tools. In order to improve the work efficiency and radiation surface's displacement uniformity of the tool, the phononic crystal structure is used to suppress the lateral vibration of the large-sized plastic ultrasonic welding tool, and the lateral vibration band gap of the phononic crystal structure is calculated. The longitudinal resonance frequency of the system is designed in the band gap range of the lateral vibration of the tool. So the lateral vibration of the tool can be effectively suppressed. The longitudinal vibration displacements on the radiation surface of the rectangular tool before and after vibration suppression are analyzed and compared with each other. The vibration mode of the ultrasonic welding system is simulated by the Comsol Multiphysics finite element software. The large-scaled tool with phononic crystal structure has a radiation surface displacement compared with the tool without phononic crystal structure, and the results show that the radiation surface displacement with phononic crystal structure will increase and tend to be uniform, greatly optimize the welding effect, improve the working efficiency of the welding system, and meet the needs of practical engineering. It is concluded that the longitudinal resonance frequency of the ultrasonic plastic welding system within the lateral vibration bandgap on the phononic crystal structure can not only suppress the lateral vibration, but also make the longitudinal displacement of the radiation surface more uniform and larger. Therefore, the work efficiency is greatly improved.