Structural health monitoring (SHM) is an inevitable component of modern civil and aerospace structures. It essentially detects the damages in the system by evaluating the performance parameters by the integration of sensing and possibly also actuation devices into the structure. In this paper damage detection process in an aluminium cantilever plate using piezoelectric sensors and actuators is simulated. Possible root damage such as transverse crack and longitudinal crack are studied. The results are compared with undamaged case. The plate is actuated using PZT actuators and performance is evaluated using PVDF sensors. Modelling for PZT/PVDF and structural parts are carried out using coupled field finite element PLANE223 ofAnsys(TM) finite element package. Strain response at the root of the cantilever plate is captured as the voltage output of the PVDF sensor. Strain response is directly related to the voltage generated in the PVDF sensor. The percentage variation of the fundamental frequency is found to be less than 3% in the present study and hence it is not taken as an index of damage. The transient voltage response captured with the transient coupled field analysis shows variation up to 24% as a signature between damaged and undamaged systems. Therefore, the present study suggests transient response evaluation using PVDF sensor is a suitable evaluation technique for the cases under consideration.
Finite element modeling of a plate with localized piezoelectric sensors and actuators
