Piezocomposite transducers for smart structures applications

Abstract

This paper gives a summary on advanced piezocomposite transducers and the perspective of their applications in the field of smart structures, health monitoring and diagnostics. At present, three different low profile piezocomposite actuator types are commercially available. The designs are arising from the R&D work at MIT in the years 1991/92 funded by the US Department of Defence. Smart Material is manufacturing Macro Fiber Composites (MFC), licensed by NASA in a full-scale production. A new MFC- design using the 3-1 coupling has been developed, recently. It allows for the reduction of drive voltage down to 360 V. Fraunhofer IKTS focused its development on custom shape composites making use of PZT tubes and plates. New actuator devices for active interfaces have been introduced for the first time. All piezocomposite design forms show different performance data, which are summarised in the present paper to provide design engineers with necessary informations in view of intended applications

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“…MFC transducers, developed at NASA Langley Research Center, are gaining increasing interest for built-in SHM systems applied to structural control (Schoenecker et al 2005, Sodano et al 2004, Wilkie et al 2000 and, more recently, to ultrasonic wave transduction (Lanza di Scalea et al 2007a, Thien et al 2005).…”

Structural Diagnostics of CFRP Composite Aircraft Components by Ultrasonic Guided Waves and Built-In Piezoelectric Transducers

“…AFC transducers have been used for guided wave transduction in the low hundreds of kHz range [139,140]. MFC transducers have been primarily utilized for structural control and vibration suppression [137,141,142], and, in select cases, as guided wave transducers [44,143]. …”

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“…They can easily be formed according to custom design, which makes them suitable for integration in various structural components. Because the electric field is only dependent on the wall thickness of the PZT tubes or plates low voltages are sufficient to drive the piezocomposites [5]. A typical force-strain diagram is shown in Figure 1.…”

“…Feedbackward algorithm are far more sensitive with regard to delays, hence fast AD/DA converters need to be used. Hence we have designed a small DSP board with 4 input and output lines (TMS320C6713 plus ADS8361 for AD/DAC8534 for DA, 16Bit resolution, 125 kHz effective sampling rate) which costs between 100-300€ depending on production 5 Fraunhofer AIS volume. The board is somewhat oversized for experimental designs.…”