Research on Active Monitoring of Structural Damages Based on Piezoelectric Smart Layer

Smart materials increasingly demonstrates prosperous vitality and importance in structural health (damage) monitoring. The piezoelectric smart layer was prepared by using the improved flexible printed circuit technology. It was not only a flexible printed circuit to the superiority of film, but also had obvious advantages to compare common Piezoelectric sensors in respects such as its preparation, installation, reliability, credibility, sensors dynamic characteristics and stability, etc. In this paper, we utilized the piezoelectric smart layer to carry on active monitor to structural damages(crack, lamination, impact), discovered that the peak-to-peak value of the main wave packet in sensor response signal obviously reduced along with the damage aggravation, the phase also had a slight difference, indicated the feasibility of using piezoelectric smart layer to carry on real-time, active monitoring to the structural damages, and also made beneficial exploration in enhancing system's reliability and hardware architecture's integration of the active monitoring system.