Highly-Efficient Damage Location for Freeform Structures Based on Flexible Piezoelectric Transducers

Traditional structural health monitoring (SHM) techniques based on lamb waves are greatly limited in the industrial applications in freeform structures due to the unreconfigurable rigid piezoelectric sensors. Here we have proposed an approach based on flexible macro-fiber composite (MFC) sensors for precise damage location in freeform aluminum plate benefitting from the flexibility and durability of the MFC. Due to the unidirectional behavior of MFC transducer, the receiver with rosette arrangement is introduced to determine the direction of the lamb waves. Thus, the damage, illuminated by the lamb waves actuated by MFC transducers, can be located accurately by two MFC rosettes. Our preliminary results validate the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed detection approach, which opens a new avenue toward the SHM techniques on the complex structures.