• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.287-303
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• 2018

Applications of energy harvesting from mechanical vibrations is becoming popular but the full potential of such applications is yet to be explored. This paper addresses this issue by considering an application of energy harvesting for the dual objective of serving as an indicator of structural health monitoring (SHM) and extent of control. Variation of harvested energy from an undamaged baseline is employed for this purpose and the concept is illustrated by implementing it for active vibrations of a pipe structure. Theoretical and experimental analyses are carried out to determine the energy harvesting potential from undamaged and damaged conditions. The use of energy harvesting as indicator for control is subsequently investigated, considering the effect of the introduction of a tuned mass damper (TMD). It is found that energy harvesting can be used for the detection and monitoring of the location and magnitude of damage occurring within a pipe structure. Additionally, the harvested energy acts as an indicator of the extent of reduction of vibration of pipes when a TMD is attached. This paper extends the range of applications of energy harvesting devices for the monitoring of built infrastructure and illustrates the vast potential of energy harvesters as smart sensors.

• Composites Research
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.155-161
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• 2015

A composite structure was fabricated with embedded impact detection capabilities for applications in Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). By embedding sensor functionality in the composite, the structure can successfully perform impact localization in real time. Smart resin, composed of $Pb(Ni_{1/3}Nb_{2/3})O_3-Pb(Zr,\;Ti)O_2$ (PNN-PZT) powder and epoxy resin with 1:30 wt%, was used instead of conventional epoxy resin in order to activate the sensor function in the composite structure. The embedded impact sensor in the composite was fabricated using Hand Lay-up and Vacuum Assisted Resin Transfer Molding(VARTM) methods to inject the smart resin into the glass-fiber fabric. The electrodes were fabricated using silver paste on both the upper and bottom sides of the specimen, then poling treatment was conducted to activate the sensor function using a high voltage amplifier at 4 kV/mm for 30 min at room temperature. The composite's piezoelectric sensitivity was measured to be 35.13 mV/N by comparing the impact force signals from an impact hammer with the corresponding output voltage from the sensor. Because impact sensor functionality was successfully embedded in the composite structure, various applications of this technique in the SHM industry are anticipated. In particular, impact localization on large-scale composite structures with complex geometries is feasible using this composite embedded impact sensor.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.60-66
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• 2006

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate potential application of Lightweight Piezo-composite Actuator (LIPCA) to suppress vibrations of structures. The LIPCA, consisting of a piezoelectric layer, a carbon/epoxy layer and glass/epoxy layers, has advantages in terms of high performance, durability and reliability, compared to the bare piezoelectric ceramic (PZT) actuator. We performed two kinds of experiments on static actuation and active vibration suppression to investigate the actuation performances of the LIPCA and the bare PZT. We attached the actuator on one side and a strain gage on the other side of an aluminum beam. In the static actuation test, we evaluated the performance by comparing equivalent actuation moments of the LIPCA and the bare PZT due to the applied voltage. In the active vibration control test, control signals were generated to suppress the vibration of the beam by the PID control algorithm based on the measured strain signals. The performances were estimated based on settling times of the strain responses. It can be concluded that the LIPCA has better actuation performances than the bare PZT in active control of free vibration as well as static actuation.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.369-384
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• 2020

A wavefield sparse reconstruction technique based on compressed sensing is developed in this work to dramatically reduce the number of measurements. Firstly, a severely underdetermined representation of guided wavefield at a snapshot is established in the spatial domain. Secondly, an optimal compressed sensing model of guided wavefield sparse reconstruction is established based on l₁-norm penalty, where a suite of discrete cosine functions is selected as the dictionary to promote the sparsity. The regular, random and jittered undersampling schemes are compared and selected as the undersampling matrix of compressed sensing. Thirdly, a gradient projection method is employed to solve the compressed sensing model of wavefield sparse reconstruction from highly incomplete measurements. Finally, experiments with different excitation frequencies are conducted on an aluminum plate to verify the effectiveness of the proposed sparse reconstruction method, where a scanning laser Doppler vibrometer as the true benchmark is used to measure the original wavefield in a given inspection region. Experiments demonstrate that the missing wavefield data can be accurately reconstructed from less than 12% of the original measurements; The reconstruction accuracy of the jittered undersampling scheme is slightly higher than that of the random undersampling scheme in high probability, but the regular undersampling scheme fails to reconstruct the wavefield image; A quantified mapping relationship between the sparsity ratio and the recovery error over a special interval is established with respect to statistical modeling and analysis.