Published in

July 2013 issue of Marine Technology Reporter magazine

MTR100 '13 Materials Systems Inc.

Marine Technology Reporter

543 Great Road, Littleton, Mass., 01460
Tel: 978-486-0404
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.msisonar.com
CEO/President: Carol W. Bowen, Ph.D.
Vice President: Gerald Schmidt
Engineering Director: Dr. Brian Pazol
Number of Employees: 40

MSI (Materials Systems Inc.) designs and manufactures custom sonar transducers and arrays for a wide range of applications, including harbor defense, side-scan, obstacle avoidance, sub-bottom profiling, swath bathymetry, mine hunting, swimmer detection, and acoustic communications. MSI’s piezocomposite technology offers extremely broad bandwidth, high receive sensitivity, high source levels, conformability for curved arrays, and reduced side lobes. MSI is in full scale production on a variety of commercial and industrial customers. MSI is ISO 9001:2008 certified.
MSI’s piezocomposite arrays deliver broad bandwidth, enabling broad spectrum (chirp) and multi-frequency operating techniques which provide greater resolution. MSI’s piezocomposite arrays can also be curved and shaded to achieve a specific beampattern or to achieve a hydrodynamic profile when mounting the arrays to the curved hull of a vessel or AUV. Resonant transmit designs are in production at frequencies ranging 12 kHz to 1MHz. Receive arrays cover this same range and more, operating as low as 3 Hz in long-range surveillance arrays. MSI’s piezocomposite arrays have been shown to meet full explosive shock requirements for Navy operations in both the U.S. and U.K., and can be configured for full ocean depth performance. MSI also has ongoing R&D efforts to further develop sonar technology.
Currently MSI has a number of R&D projects developing single crystal piezoceramic and piezocomposite technology for use in sonar transducers and arrays. Single crystal materials provide wider bandwidth and higher sensitivity than current piezoceramic and piezocomposite technologies.
 

(As published in the July/August 2013 edition of Marine Technologies - www.seadiscovery.com)