A review of manufacturing techniques of smart composite structures with embedded bulk piezoelectric transducers

Abstract

Since the mid-1980's, sensors and actuators have been combined with composite materials in order to enhance and increase the functionalities of the resulting products. These innovative devices are called intelligent, adaptive or smart structures. Their main applications are related but not limited to vibration control, structural health monitoring, shape control and energy harvesting. One possible way of developing these devices is to embed the smart materials inside the structure. In this case, the main challenge is the way of embedding the smart material during the manufacturing process. This review presents the key elements of the manufacturing process, provides an overview of the techniques developed to embed the bulk piezoelectric transducers in the composite and details the achievements made with them. In conclusion, some guidelines for futures researches and developments are proposed

Energy Harvesting Technologies for Structural Health Monitoring of Airplane Components—A Review

“…An EH application for aircraft composite structures, using MFC principles, was studied also in [ 137 ], where the developed co-curing, used to integrate the EH elements into the carbon-fibre composite airframe structures, offered, if compared to those obtained by direct bonding methods, harvested powers higher by up to 23%, with maximal attained power values, for low frequency excitations (1-100 Hz), between 0.16 and 42.1 mW. An overview of the key elements of various manufacturing techniques, of the respective work-flow steps, as well as of the factors impacting the performances of the final products, all used to obtain smart composite structures with embedded piezoelectric transducers was recently provided in [ 138 ].…”

Energy harvesting using integrated piezoelectric transducer in a composite smart structure for self-powered sensor applications

“…However, for industrial applications, it is not always possible to implement into the structure additional mechanical parts and masses, especially in transportation. Besides, as Meyer et al (2019) mention, few studies addressed the integration of piezoelectric energy harvesters into complex shapes and composite structures. Yet Shi et al (2017) devised a comparison between different integration techniques for Macro Fiber Composite transducers (MFC) in composite plane wings, supporting the hypothesis that integrating the transducer during the manufacturing process of the vibrating structure (wing) can increase its electromechanical coupling compared to a simply bonded MFC using additional adhesive.…”

Vibration control of laminated composite cantilever beam operating in elevated thermal environments using fuzzy logic controller

“…The composite structures integrated with the sensor and actuator pair which can sense and mitigate the vibrations are known as smart structures. 6,12 Piezoelectric patches are predominantly used as the sensor and actuating elements to achieve the AVC of the system. The sensor reads the parameters like force, strain, and acceleration and the antivibration signals can be provided through the actuator.…”