Modeling the thermal behavior of PZT patches during the manufacturing process of smart thermoplastic structures

Abstract

This paper concerns the manufacturing processes of thermoplastic structures including piezoceramic patches (PZT). The objective of the study reported here was to find a trade-off between the manufacturing conditions and the thermal endurance of the PZT patches. We studied the influence of high temperatures on the PZT efficiency during manufacturing. Two processes were considered: injection molding and thermoforming. The studied object consists of a polypropylene plate containing a PZT patch integrated at different positions. On the one hand, we simulated with ANSYS the thermal transient effects to study the PZT cooling according to the time of its exposure to heat for different fabrication cases and with different manufacturing processes. On the other hand, the loss in PZT generated voltage according to the temperature increment was measured by thermo-mechanical experiences using a dynamical-mechanical analysis machine (DMA) connected to an acquisition chain.

Optimization Criteria for Optimal Placement of Piezoelectric Sensors and Actuators on a Smart Structure: A Technical Review

“…This effect occurs naturally in quartz but can be induced in other materials such as specially formulated ceramics consisting mainly of lead, zirconium, and titanium (PZT). Piezoelectric materials can be used as sensors and actuators in the form of distributed layers (Bailey and Hubbard, 1985;Hanagud et al, 1985;Tzou and Hollkamp, 1994), surface bonded patches (Crawley and de Luis, 1987;Sharma et al, 2007), embedded patches (Crawley and de Luis, 1987;Raja et al, 2002;Elsoufi et al, 2007), cylindrical stacks (Li et al, 2008), screen printed piezoelectric layer (Glynne-Jones et al, 2001), active fiber composite patches (Raja et al, 2004), functionally graded piezoelectric material patches (Yang and Xiang, 2007), etc. Surface mounted or embedded piezoelectric patches can control a structure better than a distributed one because the influence of each patch on the structural response can be individually controlled (Tzou and Fu, 1994).…”

A smart pinless ejection mechanism using dual-resonance excitation Langevin piezoelectric transducers

“…The surfaces of injection parts would become scarred when the contact stress between the ejector pin and the surface of the component is too high. For many applications, the surfaces of the plastic injection parts should be flawless or exhibit precise profiles [1][2][3]. A pinless ejection mechanism is required to prevent scars and is the objective of this research.…”