Application of the Piezoelectric Materials for Health Monitoring in Civil Engineering: An Overview

Abstract

There are strong demands for health-monitoring techniques in civil engineering. Piezoelectric sensors and actuators provide a new promising approach to addressing these demands. Smart structure embedded with piezoelectric sensors and actuators has the advantage of structural simplicity, low cost, quick response and high reliability. This paper first reviews the basics of the piezoelectric materials, in particular the Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT), and then presents various methods of structural health monitoring using piezoelectric materials. The most popular principle of health monitoring using PZT patches is to compare the dynamic response, impedance or modal parameters of the current structural status with those of the healthy state. In the implementation of this principle, the health monitoring methods using piezoelectric materials can be summed up as comparing the following parameters between the healthy structure and the damaged structure: modal parameters (modal shape, natural modal frequency, damping ratio, etc.), frequency response, time response, impedance response, transfer function, etc. In processing and analyzing the sensor signal, the artificial neural network, wavelet analysis etc. are useful to detect the nature, size and location of damage.