Adding a cylindrical liquid cavity at the radiation surface of a piston transducer can introduce the liquid cavity resonance into the vibration system, thereby extending the operating bandwidth of the transducer. However, recent studies have shown that effective coupling of the liquid cavity resonance with the self-resonance of the piston transducer presents difficulties, resulting in significant fluctuations in the transmitting voltage response (TVR) within the operating frequency band. The physical mechanism behind this phenomenon remains unclear to date. In this paper, a distributed parameter model (DPM) for the cavity-loaded piston transducer is proposed. The admittance, amplitude and phase of the vibration velocity and TVR of the transducer are calculated using both DPM and finite element method (FEM). The results from DPM and FEM exhibit good agreement, indicating that the DPM can accurately describe the vibration characteristics of the transducer. Finally, two physical analogies of the transducer are proposed and explanations for the large fluctuations in TVR are given. This study reveals the modal coupling mechanism of the cavity-loaded piston transducer, and provides theoretical support for the analysis and designs of such transducers.
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