Abstract
Increasing the safety demands of various progressively complex structures (e.g., in aerospace, automotive engineering, and wind power technology) and the parallel goal of reducing inspection costs set new objectives in the field of ultrasonics and guided elastic wave measurements. The focus is to deliver applicable sensors attached permanently to a particular structure for on-demand inspections. Piezoelectric fiber patches (PFPs) are known as lightweight and structure-conforming transducers for guided elastic wave generation and detection. We propose a new PFP concept combining advantages of different previous designs. With the new approach, a user can switch between a Lamb wave and a shear horizontal wave excitation by partially changing the polarity of the transducer electrodes. After summarizing the existing PFP variants, the new concept is introduced and experimentally verified by a three-dimensional laser Doppler vibrometer visualization of excited waves. Moreover, the first prototype of the new PFP transducer is presented.
Highlights
Structural health monitoring (SHM) refers to the process of implementing a damage detection and characterization system for engineering structures based on permanently installed transducers
The mode-switchable Piezoelectric fiber patches (PFPs) was attached to a steel plate of thickness 2 mm
The orientation in space was such that the interdigital electrodes (IDEs) electrodes were orientated vertically
Summary
Structural health monitoring (SHM) refers to the process of implementing a damage detection and characterization system for engineering structures based on permanently installed transducers. Numerous physical principles can be used for this purpose. Elastic waves guided in plate- and shell-like structures have been widely applied. Guided elastic waves (GEWs) have already been used in acoustic emissions for the survey of pressure vessels long before the SHM became popular. To excite and detect GEWs, appropriate transducers are required; in most cases, they can act as both a transmitter and receiver. A few criteria are important for the choice of transducer, including the following:
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