• Computers and Concrete
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.595-603
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• 2017

Piezoceramic transducers have been widely used in the health monitoring of civil structures. However, in most cases, they are used as sensors either to measure strain or receive stress waves. This paper proposes a method of using piezoelectric transducers as strain gauges and acoustic emission (AE) sensors simultaneously. The signals received by piezoceramic transducers are decomposed into different frequency components for various analysis purposes. The low-frequency signals are used to measure strain, whereas the high-frequency signals are used as acoustic emission signal associated with local damage. The b-value theory is used to process the AE signal in piezoceramic transducers. The proposed method was applied in the bending failure experiments of two reinforced concrete beams to verify its feasibility. The results showed that the extracted low-frequency signals from the piezoceramic transducers had good agreement with that from the strain gauge, and the processed high-frequency signal from piezoceramic transducers as AE could indicate the local damage to concrete. The experimental results verified the feasibly of structural health monitoring using piezoceramic transducers as strain gauges and AE sensors simultaneously, which can advance their application in civil engineering.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.6 no.5_6
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• pp.731-748
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• 2010

Impact detection and health monitoring are very important tasks for civil infrastructures, such as bridges. Piezoceramic based transducers are widely researched for these tasks due to the piezoceramic material's inherent advantages of dual sensing and actuation ability, which enables the active sensing method for structural health monitoring with a network of piezoceramic transducers. Wireless sensor networks, which are easy for deployment, have great potential in health monitoring systems for large civil infrastructures to identify early-age damages. However, most commercial wireless sensor networks are general purpose and may not be optimized for a network of piezoceramic based transducers. Wireless networks of piezoceramic transducers for active sensing have special requirements, such as relatively high sampling rate (at a few-thousand Hz), incorporation of an amplifier for the piezoceramic element for actuation, and low energy consumption for actuation. In this paper, a wireless network is specially designed for piezoceramic transducers to implement impact detection and active sensing for structural health monitoring. A power efficient embedded system is designed to form the wireless sensor network that is capable of high sampling rate. A 32 bit RISC wireless microcontroller is chosen as the main processor. Detailed design of the hardware system and software system of the wireless sensor network is presented in this paper. To verify the functionality of the wireless sensor network, it is deployed on a two-story concrete frame with embedded piezoceramic transducers, and the active sensing property of piezoceramic material is used to detect the damage in the structure. Experimental results show that the wireless sensor network can effectively implement active sensing and impact detection with high sampling rate while maintaining low power consumption by performing offline data processing and minimizing wireless communication.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.175-180
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• 2017

The load-carrying capacity and structural behavior of concrete-filled steel tube (CFST) structures is highly influenced by the grouting compactness in the steel tube. Due to the invisibility of the grout in the steel tube, monitoring of the grouting progress in such a structure is still a challenge. This paper develops an active sensing approach with combined piezoceramic-based smart aggregates (SA) and piezoceramic patches to monitor the grouting compactness of CFST bridge structure. A small-scale steel specimen was designed and fabricated to simulate CFST bridge structure in this research. Before casting, four SAs and two piezoceramic patches were installed in the pre-determined locations of the specimen. In the active sensing approach, selected SAs were utilized as actuators to generate designed stress waves, which were detected by other SAs or piezoceramic patch sensors. Since concrete functions as a wave conduit, the stress wave response can be only detected when the wave path between the actuator and the sensor is filled with concrete. For the sake of monitoring the grouting progress, the steel tube specimen was grouted in four stages, and each stage held three days for cement drying. Experimental results show that the received sensor signals in time domain clearly indicate the change of the signal amplitude before and after the wave path is filled with concrete. Further, a wavelet packet-based energy index matrix (WPEIM) was developed to compute signal energy of the received signals. The computed signal energies of the sensors shown in the WPEIM demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method in the monitoring of the grouting progress.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.643-662
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• 2016

The monitoring of structural integrity of pipeline tapered thread connections is of great significance in terms of safe operation in the industry. In order to detect effectively the loosening degree of tapered thread connection, an active sensing method using piezoceramic transducers was developed based on time reversal technique in this paper. As the piezoeramic transducers can be either as actuators or sensors to generate or detect stress waves, the energy transmission for tapered thread connection was analyzed. Subsequently, the detection principle for tapered thread connection based on time reversal was introduced. Finally, the inherent relationship between the contact area and tightness degree of tapered thread connection for the pipe structural model was investigated. Seven different contact area scenarios were tested. Each scenario was created by loosening connectors ranging from 3 turns to 4.5 turns in the right tapered threads when the contact area in the left tapered threads were 4.5 turns. The experiments were separately conducted with a highly noisy environment and various excitation signal amplitudes. The results show the focused peaks based on time reversal have the monotonously rising trend with the increase of the contact areas of tapered threads within an acceptable monitoring resolution for metal pipes. Compared with the energy method, the proposed time reversal based method to monitor tapered threads loosening demonstrates to be more robust in rejecting noise in Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) applications.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1994.07b
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• pp.1403-1405
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• 1994

In this study, the piezoelectric transducers with 1-3 connectivity have maded. A piezoelectric ceramic PZT prepared by Wet-Dry Combination method is used as a filler in Eccogel polymer matrix. The pulse-echo response for 1-3 type composite transducers were carried out in water. It was observed that the transmitting and receiving sensitivity of 1-3 type composite transducers were improved in comparison with that or solid PZT transducer. The reason is for that 1-3 composites have a hish piezoelectric voltage coefficients, The period of pulse-echo response for the transducer is in a good agreement with the resonant frequency of self-maded composite transducer.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.19 no.4 s.65
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• pp.21-27
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• 2005

Large welded structures, including ships and offshore structures, are normally in operation under cyclic fatigue loadings. These structures include many geometric discontinuities, as well as material discontinuities due to weld joints. The fatigue strength at these hot spots is very important for the structural performance. In the past, various Non Destructive Evaluation (NDE) techniques have been developed to detect fatigue cracks and to estimate their location and size. However, an important limitation of most of the existing NDE methods is that they are off line; the normal operation of the structure has to be interrupted, and the device often has to be disassembled. This study explores the development of a structural health monitoring system, with a special interest in applying the technique to welded structural members in ship and offshore structures. In particular, the impedance based structural health monitoring technique that employs the coupling effect of piezoceramic (PZT) materials and structures is investigated.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.351-359
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• 2015

Typical underwater acoustic transducers detect only the magnitude of an acoustic pressure and they have the limitation of not being able to recognize the direction of the sound signal. Hence, the authors of this paper proposed a new vector sensor structure based on Tonpilz transducers that could detect both the magnitude and the direction of a sound pressure. In the proposed structure, the piezoceramic ring was divided into four segments, and proper combination of the output voltages of the segments in response to the external sound pressure could provide the information on the orientation of the sound source. In this paper, a Tonpilz transducer has been fabricated to have the proposed structure and its characteristics has been measured to confirm the validity of the proposed structure.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.435-446
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• 2019

The existing piezoelectric spherical transducers with fixed prescribed dynamic characteristics limit their application in scenarios with multi-frequency or frequency variation requirement. To address this issue, this work proposes an improved design of piezoelectric spherical transducers using the resistance tuning method. Two piezoceramic shells are the functional elements with one for actuation and the other for tuning through the variation of load resistance. The theoretical model of the proposed design is given based on our previous work. The effects of the resistance, the middle surface radius and the thickness of the epoxy adhesive layer on the dynamic characteristics of the transducer are explored by numerical analysis. The numerical results show that the multi-frequency characteristics of the transducer can be obtained by tuning the resistance, and its electromechanical coupling coefficient can be optimized by a matching resistance. The proposed design and derived theoretical solution are validated by comparing with the literature given special examples as well as an experimental study. The present study demonstrates the feasibility of using the proposed design to realize the multi-frequency characteristics, which is helpful to improve the performance of piezoelectric spherical transducers used in underwater acoustic detection, hydrophones, and the spherical smart aggregate (SSA) used in civil structural health monitoring, enhancing their operation at the multiple working frequencies to meet different application requirements.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.26 no.11
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• pp.790-800
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• 2013

The optimal structure of 1-3 piezocomposites has been determined by controlling polymer properties, ceramic volume fraction, thickness of composite and aspect ratio of the composite to maximize the TVR (transmitting voltage response), RVS (receiving voltage sensitivity) and FBW (fractional bandwidth) of underwater acoustic transducers. Influence of the design variables on the transducer performance was analyzed with equivalent circuits and the finite element method. When the piezocomposite is vibrating in a pure thickness mode, inter-pillar resonant modes are likely to occur between lattice-structured piezoceramic pillars and polymer matrix, which significantly deteriorate the performance of the piezocomposite. In this work, a new method to design the structure of the 1~3 type piezocomposite was proposed to maximize the TVR, RVS and FBW while preventing the occurrence of the inter-pillar modes. Genetic algorithm was used in the optimal design.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.14-20
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• 2003

Piezoelectric ultrasonic transducers for high temperature contact measurement were developed. These high temperature ultrasonic transducers (HTUT) consisted of bismuth titanate piezoceramic element whose Curie temperature is higher than $600^{\circ}C$, a backing material of the mixture of tungsten powder and inorganic binder, an inner alumina tube, a wear Plate and a housing. The operational frequencies or the HTUT were 1.04 and 2.08 MHz, respectively. Various commercially available couplants for high temperature were evaluated and compared. As a couplant for high temperature ultrasonic testing between HTUT and test specimen, gold epoxy was selected. The peak amplitude of pulse-echo signals from steel test specimen decreased with increasing temperature. The operational temperature of the HTUT reached up to $500^{\circ}C$ at which the continuous contact measurement was possible.