Macro-fiber composite piezoelectric rosettes for acoustic source location in complex structures

Abstract

An approach based upon the employment of piezoelectric transducer rosettes is proposed for passive damage or impact location in anisotropic or geometrically complex structures. The rosettes are comprised of rectangular macro-fiber composite (MFC) transducers which exhibit a highly directive response to ultrasonic guided waves. The MFC response to flexural (A0) motion is decomposed into axial and transverse sensitivity factors, which allow extraction of the direction of an incoming wave using rosette principles. The wave source location in a plane is then simply determined by intersecting the wave directions detected by two rosettes. The rosette approach is applicable to anisotropic or geometrically complex structures where the conventional time-of-flight source location is challenging due to the direction-dependent wave velocity. The performance of the rosettes for source location is validated through pencil-lead breaks performed on an aluminum plate, an anisotropic CFRP laminate and a complex CFRP-honeycomb sandwich panel.

Lamb Wave Directional Sensing with Piezoelectric Fiber Rosette in Structure Health Monitoring

“…Substituting equation (7) into equation (3) and employing the coordinate transformation x ′ x cos θ + y sin θ and Euler's formulate e ia − e −ia 2i sin a, the piezoelectric ber's response to the exural Lamb wave is as follows [17,18]:…”

“…Kawiecki and Jesse [16] demonstrated experimentally that the piezoelectric rosette, similar to the strain gage rosette, can produce more damage-related information to improve the damage detection performance. Lanza Di Scalea et al [17] and Matt and Scalea [18] exploited the directional sensitivities of the rectangular piezoelectric sheet and MFC and used a delta rosette configuration for acoustic emission (AE) localization. Salamone et al [19] conducted a impact location test with MFC rosettes in a high-velocity regime on both isotropic and anisotropic plates.…”

“…Collet et al [21] focused on the directivity properties when MFC actuated individually, or as part of rosette configuration, and compared with the monolithic circular piezoelectric disc and rectangular piezoelectric sheet. Considering the anisotropic material of MFC, the direction sensitivity is decomposed into longitudinal and transverse sensitivity factors [18].…”

A Guided Wave Sensor Enabling Simultaneous Wavenumber-Frequency Analysis for Both Lamb and Shear-Horizontal Waves

“…While piezoelectric ceramics are usually brittle and cannot conform to curved surfaces, piezoelectric fiber composites (PFC) [20] with interdigital electrodes can send and receive both Lamb waves [21] and SH waves [16] and can have sufficient flexibility for surfaces with moderate curvature. However, the interdigital or comb electrodes are preferentially tuned to wavelengths equal to the electrode spacing.…”

Experimental demonstration of spiral frequency-steerable acoustic sensors

“…However, individually controlling each array element leads to significant hardware complexity, power consumption and data rate requirements. Alternative devices with inherent directional properties include the CLoVER transducer [4] featuring individually activated wedge sections of a piezo-composite ring pattern, as well as rosette configurations of microfiber composite (MFC) devices [5]. Whereas these solutions still involve multiple channels, recently proposed FSATs incorporate directional capabilities into one-or two-channel devices [6,7,8] with peculiar geometries.…”