Abstract
The objective was to apply a structural health monitoring concept to detect loosening of a bolt without human involvement. This paper proposes a new method of a bolt loosening detection by adopting a smart washer which uses a piezoelectric material. The proposed washer is a cantilevered plate type patched piezoelectric material. A self-sensing and actuation function featuring this material is applied to the washer. An explanation that natural frequency decreases with decrease of the bolt tightening axial tension by using the system identification, the concept of the proposed method and experiments verifying its effectiveness are described. The natural frequency of the smart washer was identified with sub-space state space identification method. There was good correlation between the change of the natural frequency of the smart washer system and the decrement of bolt tightening axial tension.
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