Acoustic power transfer and communication through metal layers is of great interest in many applications where the integrity of metal boxes, tanks, pipes or walls must be preserved by avoiding through-hole electrical connections. While acoustic power transfer has been widely studied last decades, the optimization of such systems has not been assessed comprehensively regarding the choice of transducers’ dimensions and materials and the impact of the wall characteristic acoustic impedance. This paper stands at answering these optimization issues, using a new implementation of an analytical model and two figures of merit to evaluate performances: the power transfer efficiency and a new figure of merit, the normalized transmitted power, a crucial characteristic for electronics implementation. Among other results, we disprove the commonly used design rule stating that equalizing the characteristic acoustic impedance of wall and transducers is the best option. We propose a method to quantify the impact of acoustic impedance mismatches on performances and show that intermediary layers sized with our optimization process can solve these acoustic impedance issues, resulting in an important gain in the transmitted power (multiplied by 40 in our example) and opening up great opportunities for the acoustic power transfer technology.

通过金属层的声功率传递和通信在许多应用中引起了极大的兴趣，在这些应用中，必须通过避免通孔电气连接来保持金属盒，储罐，管道或墙壁的完整性。尽管最近几十年来对声功率传输进行了广泛的研究，但尚未就换能器尺寸和材料的选择以及壁特性声阻抗的影响全面评估此类系统的优化。本文旨在通过使用分析模型的新实现和两个品质因数来评估性能，以回答这些优化问题：功率传输效率和新的品质因数（归一化的传输功率），这是电子实现的关键特性。在其他结果中，我们不赞成常用的设计规则，该规则指出，均衡墙壁和换能器的特征声阻抗是最佳选择。我们提出了一种方法来量化声阻抗不匹配对性能的影响，并表明以我们的优化过程确定尺寸的中间层可以解决这些声阻抗问题，从而在传输功率（本例中乘以40）和开口方面产生了重要的收益。为声功率传输技术带来了巨大的机会。