An integrated algorithm for structural health monitoring of composite plate using electromechanical impedance

Abstract

The extraordinary development of structural materials, such as composite materials, and structural configurations necessitated establishing robust and continuous structural health monitoring (SHM) systems. The aim of the present work is to establish an integrated SHM algorithm to remotely detect damage starting from the insipient level for structures made of composite materials. It depends on the electromechanical impedance (EMI) technique using Piezoelectric Waver Active Sensor (PWAS). The algorithm procedure includes several subroutines developed to ensure the identification of real damage and relatively define its location and severity precisely. The performance and the reliability of the proposed algorithm are verified through numerical simulations carried out through finite element modeling of the monitored structure using ANSYS software, since it is available to do multi-physics modeling to simulate coupling characteristics of piezoelectricity. MATLAB codes are developed to prepare and process the obtained numerical data in order to implement the algorithm subroutines. Several numerical simulation studies are carried out to verify the proposed algorithm procedure and measure its performance. Carbon woven fiber composite plates equipped with a matrix of PWASs are assigned as test articles. Numerically, the algorithm was shown to be beneficial to detect two different-location of insipient damages and two different-location of insipient and moderate damages, as well as to locate these damages with accuracy more than 80%. Reliability of data obtained from physical operating system was guaranteed using sensors diagnostic check in advance to SHM process.

Energy-Based Optimal Placement of Piezoelectric Actuator on Smart Thin Plate

“…As stated earlier, structural health monitoring (SHM) is one of the smart structures' main target functions, for which innumerable aspects were placed to guarantee the accepted integrity of the substrate structure [4,5]. Incorporating PWAS in such a process showed promising capabilities through combining its electromechanical coupling properties with the structure vibration characteristics to detect any possible flaws [6,7]. So far, plenty of research efforts concerning these field have been made.…”

“…Wang et al [10] designed an effective array system of PZT to reduce flaw detection time. Amin and Salem [7] introduced an integrated SHM system to detect, quantify, and localize presumed different cases of damage using an attached array of PWAS for a thin plate of carbon fiber-epoxy, in which PWASs are used to excite the substrate structure over a designated frequency interval.…”

“…Also, the actuators optimum locations are graphically dropped on the distribution diagram for the summation of strains in the x and y directions to show the relation between the strain and optimum location of actuators. The voltage load of the same polarity as the actuator poling voltage is assigned with black color border, while the voltage load of the opposite polarity is assigned with white border, Figs 5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14.…”