Page 52 - Winter2014

Passings
Kim C. Benjamin
1954-2013
ment of a toroidal volume search sonar (TVSS); development multi-layered, broadband copolymer for acoustic transmit applications; and production support for numerous U.S. Navy fleet transducers. In 1990, Mr. Benjamin worked jointly
with The Pennsylvania State University in fabricating the first 1-3 piezo-composite transduction prototypes used for acous- tic transmission applications. This early effort would later become the focus for much of Mr. Benjamin’s career when he joined the Naval Sea Systems Command Division Newport in November 1995.
Throughout his Navy civilian career, Mr. Benjamin focused primarily on advancing 1-3 piezocomposite materials into unique underwater acoustic devices. Among his key accom- plishments are the following: design and fabrication of 1-3 piezocomposite-based beam steered parametric mode trans- ducers with integral high-gain receivers; design and delivery of parametric mode sub-bottom profiler transducers; develop- ment of U. S. Navy calibration transducer standards F82 and F83; use of 1-3 piezo-composites materials with area--shaded electroding to realize a new class of transduction which main- tains a constant beam-width over a two octave bandwidth; novel use of singly and double curved piezo-composites for applications in ultrasonics and structural receivers; design and segment demonstration of a cylindrical array module that
is coupled linearly to form a towed line array with 3D spa-
tial discrimination; design and fabrication of a 120 element conical octahedral homing array for high speed (> 150 knots) applications; design and development of wideband piezo-com- posite-based transducers for acoustically tracking high speed underwater projectiles traveling near the speed of sound of wa- ter; design of all tooling used for the development of a singly curved array of cymbal panels for low profile, low frequency transduction application. Kim has been granted eight U.S. patents and has another seven patent disclosures currently under consideration at the United States Patent Office.
Mr. Benjamin was active in the Acoustical Society of America beginning with his first presentation in 1979 and continued with numerous presentations and publications throughout
his career. He was the former Chair of the ASA Engineering Acoustics Technical Committee (2003-2006) and long term member of the ASA Medal and Awards Committee (2006-2013).
Kim enjoyed sailing and spending time at his vacation home in the woods of Tamworth, New Hampshire. He is survived by his wife Pamela. – Thomas R. Howarth
and, in 1977, the B.S. degree in Physics from the University of Rhode Island. Kim completed his M.S. degree in Ocean Engineering in 1980 at the University of Rhode Island with Professor Peter R. Stepanishen as his Advisor.
Mr. Benjamin’s M. S. thesis, “Forward and Backward Pro- jection of Acoustic Fields using FFT Methods,” provided groundbreaking understanding of the interaction and inter- pretation of how acoustic waves can be transposed. Portions of this work were presented at the 97th Meeting of the ASA in Boston in June 1979 and at the 101st Meeting of the ASA in Ottawa in May 1981. The subject of the second presentation was published in JASA in April 1982. Kim had over 50 con- ference presentations and 20 publications during his career.
From 1981 to 1995 (with a 7 month absence at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in 1985), Kim was an Acoustic De- sign Engineer at Raytheon Company’s Submarine Signal Divi- sion in Portsmouth, RI where he specialized in the design and development of underwater acoustic transducers. Mr. Ben- jamin enjoyed a reputation early in his career for developing new acoustic transduction materials from laboratory curiosities into advanced transduction devices. One of the first materials he investigated was magneto-strictive metallic glassy ribbon for use as a gradient hydrophone. This was later followed with experimental efforts to evaluate material parameter coefficients for glass reinforced composite flex-tensional transduction shells and transduction properties for length expander mag- neto-strictive rods. For the remainder of his Raytheon career (1985-1995), key efforts by Kim include: the development of a very large, 2D, ultrasonic imaging array; design and develop-
50 | Acoustics Today | Winter 2014
Kim C. Benjamin, a Fellow of the Acousti- cal Society of America, passed away at his home on Tuesday, 05 May 2013 after a 23 month illness. Mr. Benjamin was born in Providence, Rhode Island on 21 Oc- tober 1954. In 1974 he received his A.S. degree in Physics from Rhode Island Junior College