| Summary: | Acoustic field measurements of electrohydraulic lithotripters (EHL) aretypically conducted with single-element hydrophones and are subject to spatialaveraging errors because the spark source location varies from shock to shock.Linear hydrophone arrays provide a means of obtaining the instantaneous soundfield of EHLs and a more detailed understanding of EHL sound fields. Here,20-element hydrophone arrays were used to study the variability of theinstantaneous acoustic field of an experimental EHL. Calibrated arrays wereplaced at the geometric focus of an EHL and exposed to as many as 1500 shockwaves using excitations of 14, 17 and 20 kV. Instantaneous data were acquiredfrom all 20 hydrophone elements and then were processed for beamwidth, peakpressure location, and peak pressure. Instantaneous beamwidths were found to besmaller than when using a single-element hydrophone approach and peak pressureswere observed to vary more as the excitation voltage increased. © 2010IEEE.
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