Investigation of Crack Repair in Orthotropic Composite by Piezoelectric Patching

This paper presents the investigation of a crack repair in a composite plate using piezoelectric smart material, which is also called as active repair. Composite plate with crack is modeled by a finite element method. An 8-node structural shell element is used to discretize composite material, and the 8-node coupled-field element is used for the modeling of the piezoelectric patch. The repair in the cracked composite plate is modeled and analyzed under both static and dynamic loading conditions. The unimorph and bimorph patching are used for active repair. Effectiveness of the patch repair is measured in terms of stress field near the crack tip. The usefulness of unimorph and bimorph patching is compared in three different cases, namely (i) passive, (ii) active and (iii) without patching. A significant reduction in the equivalent stress at the crack tip of the composite plate is observed because of repair by unimorph and bimorph active patching. Bimorph patching presents a greater reduction in the stress level near to discontinuity. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.