A Feasibility Study on Timber Damage Detection Using Piezoceramic-Transducer-Enabled Active Sensing.

Jicheng Zhang,Yu Zheng,Yongshui Huang

doi:10.3390/s18051563

Abstract

In recent years, piezoelectric-based transducers and technologies have made significant progress towards structural health monitoring and damage evaluation for various metal and concrete structures. Timber is still commonly used as a construction material in practical engineering; however, there is a lack of research on the health monitoring of timber-based structures using piezoelectric-based transducers and methods. This paper conducts a feasibility study on timber damage detection using surface-mounted piezoelectric patches, which enable the stress-wave-based active sensing approach. Typical damage modes in timber frame structures, such as surface cracks and holes, were investigated in this study. In the active sensing approach, one piezoceramic transducer is used as an actuator to generate stress waves, which propagate along the surface of the timber structure, and other piezoceramic transducers function as sensors to detect the propagating stress waves. Defects, such as a crack or a hole, induce additional attenuation to the propagating stress wave. Based on this attenuation, the proposed method can detect the defects using the wavelet-packet-based damage index, demonstrating its implementation potential for real-time timber damage detection.

Highlights

Nowadays, timber is one of the most common construction materials for wood-framed houses [1].timber structures are susceptible to termite attacks, fungal decays, and cracks during their service life due to mechanical loads and environmental effects
Timber structures are susceptible to termite attacks, fungal decays, and cracks during their service life due to mechanical loads and environmental effects
It has become increasingly evident that those defects have been major factors in the deterioration of timber structures

Summary

Introduction

Timber is one of the most common construction materials for wood-framed houses [1]. The PZT-enabled active sensing approach using surface-mounted or embedded transducers has shown great potential for the structural health monitoring of mechanical and civil structures in real time [41,42,43,44,45,46] The principle of this approach is to measure the propagating wave property changes due to the structural damage by using a pair of PZT transducers or a deployed sensor network. A feasibility study on timber damage detection using the PZT-transducer-enabled active sensing approach was investigated In this investigation is an attempt to employ a stress-wave-based active sensing approach to monitor the cracks and holes in a timber structure. The analytical results indicated that this damage index had the capability of evaluating crack depths, hole depths, and hole sizes quantitatively and accurately

Figure

Timber

Experimental Setup and Experimental Procedure

Results and Discussion

Sensor response

Conclusions and Future