Assessment of temperature effect in structural health monitoring with piezoelectric wafer active sensors

This paper presents theoretical and experimental evaluation of the structural health monitoring (SHM) capability of piezoelectric wafer active sensors (PWAS) at elevated temperatures. This is important because the technologies for structural sensing and monitoring need to account for the thermal effect and compensate for it. Permanently installed PWAS transducers have been One of the extensively employed sensor technologies for in-situ continuous SHM. In this paper, the electro-mechanical impedance spectroscopy (EMIS) method has been utilized as a dynamic descriptor of PWAS behavior and as a high frequency standing wave local modal technique. Another SHM technology utilizes PWAS as far-field transient transducers to excite and detect guided waves propagating through the structure. This paper first presents how the EMIS method is used to qualify and quantify circular PWAS resonators in an increasing temperature environment up to 230 deg C. The piezoelectric material degradation with temperature was investigated and trends of variation with temperature were deduced from experimental measurements. These effects were introduced in a wave propagation simulation software called Wave Form Revealer (WFR). The thermal effects on the substrate material were also considered. Thus, the changes in the propagating guided wave signal at various temperatures could be simulated. The paper ends with summary and conclusions followed by suggestions for further work.