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DEVELOPMENT OF SIGNAL PROCESSING TOOLS AND HARDWARE FOR PIEZOELECTRIC SENSOR DIAGNOSTIC PROCESSES

Conference ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1117/12.715834· OSTI ID:986511

This paper presents a piezoelectric sensor diagnostic and validation procedure that performs in -situ monitoring of the operational status of piezoelectric (PZT) sensor/actuator arrays used in structural health monitoring (SHM) applications. The validation of the proper function of a sensor/actuator array during operation, is a critical component to a complete and robust SHM system, especially with the large number of active sensors typically involved. The method of this technique used to obtain the health of the PZT transducers is to track their capacitive value, this value manifests in the imaginary part of measured electrical admittance. Degradation of the mechanical/electric properties of a PZT sensor/actuator as well as bonding defects between a PZT patch and a host structure can be identified with the proposed procedure. However, it was found that temperature variations and changes in sensor boundary conditions manifest themselves in similar ways in the measured electrical admittances. Therefore, they examined the effects of temperature variation and sensor boundary conditions on the sensor diagnostic process. The objective of this study is to quantify and classify several key characteristics of temperature change and to develop efficient signal processing techniques to account for those variations in the sensor diagnostis process. In addition, they developed hardware capable of making the necessary measurements to perform the sensor diagnostics and to make impedance-based SHM measurements. The paper concludes with experimental results to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed technique.

Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
DOE Contract Number:
AC52-06NA25396
OSTI ID:
986511
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-07-0918
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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