• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.55-71
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• 2013

Structural health monitoring (SHM) is vital for detecting the onset of damage and for preventing catastrophic failure of civil infrastructure systems. In particular, piezoelectric transducers have the ability to excite and actively interrogate structures (e.g., using surface waves) while measuring their response for sensing and damage detection. In fact, piezoelectric transducers such as lead zirconate titanate (PZT) and poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) have been used for various laboratory/field tests and possess significant advantages as compared to visual inspection and vibration-based methods, to name a few. However, PZTs are inherently brittle, and PVDF films do not possess high piezoelectricity, thereby limiting each of these devices to certain specific applications. The objective of this study is to design, characterize, and validate piezoelectric nanocomposites consisting of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles assembled in a PVDF copolymer matrix for sensing and SHM applications. These films provide greater mechanical flexibility as compared to PZTs, yet possess enhanced piezoelectricity as compared to pristine PVDF copolymers. This study started with spin coating dispersed ZnO- and PVDF-TrFE-based solutions to fabricate the piezoelectric nanocomposites. The concentration of ZnO nanoparticles was varied from 0 to 20 wt.% (in 5 % increments) to determine their influence on bulk film piezoelectricity. Second, their electric polarization responses were obtained for quantifying thin film remnant polarization, which is directly correlated to piezoelectricity. Based on these results, the films were poled (at 50 $MV-m^{-1}$) to permanently align their electrical domains and to enhance their bulk film piezoelectricity. Then, a series of hammer impact tests were conducted, and the voltage generated by poled ZnO-based thin films was compared to commercially poled PVDF copolymer thin films. The hammer impact tests showed comparable results between the prototype and commercial samples, and increasing ZnO content provided enhanced piezoelectric performance. Lastly, the films were further validated for sensing using different energy levels of hammer impact, different distances between the impact locations and the film electrodes, and cantilever free vibration testing for dynamic strain sensing.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.163-171
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• 1998

Near/far field length and directivity of transducers were investigated for the improvement and evaluation of the detectability of flaws in a disc. The reference block is fabricated for the disc of stage 6 in Yonggwang unit 1. The near/far field and directivity of an ultrasonic transducer with the center frequency of 5MHz were calculated for the inspection of the disc. These values showed good agreements with the experimental results. In the system composed of a wedge and a disc, those are evaluated theoretically and experimentally for the specimen with the artificial flaws of the size 2mm and 4mm and an ultrasonic transducer with the center frequency 5MHz and diameter 0.5inch. The detectability of keyway-flaw and detectable region for inspection were evaluated by using both tangential $45^{\circ}$ and $90^{\circ}$ transducers located at the distance of 53mm and 75mm from the disc hub, respectively.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.354-360
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• 2002

The piezoelectric composites had many advantages in comparison with conventional piezoelectric ceramics and piezopolymers for ultrasonic transducers used in NDT and in medical ultrasionic imaging. The electromechanical coupling coefficient should be high and the acoustic impedance should be low in these applications. However, the cross-coupling with spurious oscillations caused by laterally running plate waves exhibited complex motions in the surface of piezoelectric composites with coarse lateral spatial scale. The thickness mode electromechanical coupling coefficient of 1-3type of piezoelectric compoistes were 0.36 to 0.64, and the acoustic impedance of them were 9.8 to 22.7 MRayl. The lateral resonance frequency of 1-3 type piezoelectric composites shifted to high frequency region with decreasing lateral spatial scale.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.281-294
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• 2015

Bolted joint connection is the most commonly used connection element in structures and devices. The loosening due to external dynamic loads cannot be observed and measured easily and may cause catastrophic loss especially in an extreme requirement and/or environment. In this paper, an innovative Real-time Cross-Correlation Method (RCCM) for monitoring of the bolted joint loosening was proposed. We apply time reversal process on stress wave propagation to obtain correlation signal. The correlation signal's peak amplitude represents the cross-correlation between the loosening state and the baseline working state; therefore, it can detect the state of loosening. Since the bolt states are uncorrelated with noise, the peak amplitude will not be affected by noise and disturbance while it increases SNR level and increases the measured signals' reliability. The correlation process is carried out online through physical wave propagation without any other post offline complicated analyses and calculations. We implemented the proposed RCCM on a single bolt/nut joint experimental device to quantitatively detect the loosening states successfully. After that we implemented the proposed method on a real large structure (reaction wall) with multiple bolted joint connections. Loosening indexes were built for both experiments to indicate the loosening states. Finally, we demonstrated the proposed method's great anti-noise and/or disturbance ability. In the instrumentation, we simply mounted Lead Zirconium Titanate (PZT) patches on the device/structure surface without any modifications of the bolted connection. The low-cost PZTs used as actuators and sensors for active sensing are easily extended to a sensing network for large scale bolted joint network monitoring.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.553-567
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• 2011

During the last three years, the possibility of the time reversal Lamb waves has been paid attention to for structural health monitoring of a plate. This study proposes a numerical scheme which can simulate the spatial focusing of time reversal Lamb waves on a rectangular plate. In this scheme, a time reversal process is formulated in the frequency domain using active virtual sensors being equivalent to the mirror effects of an actual sensor due to wave reflection on the plate boundary. Forward and backward Lamb wave propagations are represented by scalar functions for simulating the spatial focusing of time reversal Lamb waves. The validity of the proposed scheme is demonstrated through the comparison to the results of finite element analysis in which the spatial focusing of time reversal Lamb waves is realized by wafer-type piezoelectric(PZT) transducers collocated on a rectangular plate.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.286-294
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• 2001

In this study, 3-D underwater object recognition using the self-made 3-3 type composite ultrasonic transducer and modified SOFM(Self Organizing Feature Map) neural network are investigated. Properties of the self-made 3-3 type composite specimens are satisfied considerably with requirements as an underwater ultrasonic transducer's materials. 3-D underwater all object's recognition rates obtained from both the training data and testing data in different objects, such as a rectangular block, regular triangular block, square block and cylinderical block, were 100% and 94.0%, respectively. All object's recognition rates are obtained by utilizing the self-made 3-3 type composite transducer and SOFM neural network. From the object recognition rates, it could be seen that an ultrasonic transducer fabricated with the self-made 3-3 type composite resonator will be able to have application for the underwater object recognition.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.127-132
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• 2005

Transducers for implantable hearing aids need to be small and to have good performance in frequency responses and vibration properties. From this viewpoint, we Proposed a multi-layer actuator with the piezoelectric single crystal, PMN-PT. for the implantable hearing aid. and verified its adequacy through finite element analyses and experiments. PMN-PT multi-layer actuator samples were fabricated by stacking fourteen layers of the PMN-PT crystal. Each layer were $0.2{\cal}mm$ thick and the actuator sample was $2.8{\cal}mm$ thick in total. We evaluated the performance of the PMN-PT actuator through impedance analyses and vibration displacement measurements, and compared the result with that of a PZT actuator. Results of all the process confirmed the feasibility of the PMN-PT actuator as a good transducer for an implantable hearing aid.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.25 no.10
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• pp.566-570
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• 2015

$Bi_{0.5}Na_{0.5}TiO_3$ (BNT) based ceramics are considered potential lead-free alternatives for $Pb(Zr,Ti)O_3$(PZT) based ceramics in various applications such as sensors, actuators and transducers. However, BNT-based ceramics have lower electromechanical performance as compared with PZT based ceramics. Therefore, in this work, lead-free bulk $0.99[(Bi_{0.5}Na_{0.5})_{0.935}Ba_{0.065}]_{(1-x)}La_xTiO_3-0.01SrZO_3$ (BNBTLax-SZ, with x = 0, 0.01, 0.02) ceramics were synthesized by a conventional solid state reaction The crystal structure, dielectric response, degree of diffuseness and electric-field-induced strain properties were investigated as a function of different La concentrations. All samples were crystallized into a single phase perovskite structure. The temperature dependent dielectric response of La-modified BNBT-SZ ceramics showed lower dielectric response and improved field-induced strain response. The field induced strain increased from 0.17%_for pure BNBT-SZ to 0.38 % for 1 mol.% La-modified BNBT-SZ ceramics at an applied electric field of 6 kV/mm. These results show that La-modified BNBT-SZ ceramic system is expected to be a new candidate material for lead-free electronic devices.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.43 no.5
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• pp.319-330
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• 2022

In this study, the optimal driving frequency was derived through finite element analysis (FEA) to optimize the developed piezoelectric ultrasonic medical devices(PUMD) for bone surgery. The core of the PUMD is the piezoelectric ceramic (PZT), which is a vibrator that generates vibration energy. The piezoelectric ceramic shows the maximum current value with respect to the input voltage at the resonance frequency, which generates the maximum mechanical vibration. In the past, various studies have been conducted related to the analysis of PUMD, but most of the research so far has been limited to free vibration analysis. However, in order to derive the accurate resonant frequency, the initial stress generated by bolt tightening in the bolt-clamped Langevin type transducer (BLT) must be considered. In this study, after designing a PUMD, the driving performance according to the bolt tightening value was analyzed through FEA, and this was experimentally verified. First, the resonance mode and frequency response were confirmed through modal and harmonic analysis at 20-40 kHz, which is known as the optimal driving frequency band of PUMD for bone surgery. In addition, the design of the PUMD was confirmed by checking the mechanical behavior of the tip and the piezoelectric ceramic at the resonant frequency. Consequentially, the characteristic evaluation was performed, and it was confirmed that the resonant frequency result derived through the FEA was reasonable. Through this study, we presented a more rational FEA method than before for BLT transducers. We expect that this will shorten the time and cost of developing a PUMD, and will enable the development of more stable and high-quality products.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.21 no.12
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• pp.1120-1131
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• 2011

Researches using time reversal acoustics(TRA) for impact localization have been paid attention to recently. Dispersion characteristics of Lamb waves, which restrict the utility of classical nondestructive evaluation based on time-of-flight information, can be compensated through the application of TRA to Lamb waves on a plate. This study investigates the spatial focusing performance of time reversal Lamb waves on a plate using finite element analysis. In particular, the virtual sensor effect caused by multiple wave reflections at the boundaries of a plate is shown to enable the spatial focusing of Lamb waves though a very small number of surface-bonded piezoelectric(PZT) sensors are available. The time window size of forward response signals, are normalized with respect to the number of virtual active sensors. Then their effects on the spatial focusing performance of Lamb waves are investigated.