Effect of hyperthermal cryogenic environments on the performance of piezoelectric transducer

•This paper focuses on the performance of piezoelectric transducer in hyperthermal and cryogenic.•A novel percussive ultrasonic drill is presented to adapt the temperature of asteroid surface.•Theoretical and FEM are used to predict the resonant characteristics of the piezoelectric transducer.•A testbed is established to measure the performance of piezoelectric transducer and ultrasonic drill. China’s asteroid exploration mission plans to use multiple ultrasonic drill cross-drilling to anchor the spacecraft on the asteroid surface. To solve the problem of the environmental temperature adaptability of the ultrasonic drill on the surface of asteroids, we propose an ultrasonic drill driven by the Single crystal piezoelectric rings piezoelectric transducer and studied the resonant characteristics of the piezoelectric transducer at hyperthermal and cryogenic environments. First, the ultrasonic drill’s structure and working principle are proposed along with the detailed design of the transducer. Then, the theoretical analysis and finite element method were used to establish the frequency-temperature model of the transducer, respectively. It can be simulated the effect of temperature on the resonant frequency and the nodal plane offset of the transducer. Finally, experiments were conducted to verify the change law of the resonant frequency of the transducer, and tested the drilling performance of the ultrasonic drill in hyperthermal and cryogenic. Our results showed that the transducer’s resonant frequency decreases with the increase of temperature, which is approximately linear; the ultrasonic drill can maintain good drilling performance in the temperature range of −175 to 100 °C. Meanwhile, the drilling pressure is only 5 N, and the drilling power is less than 40 W. This article fills the research gap in the resonant performance of ultrasonic drill in hyperthermal and cryogenic environments, and provides a technical reference for the application of ultrasonic drill in extraterrestrial environments.