STRUCTURAL HEALTH MONITORING OF SMART POLYMER-MATRIX COMPOSITE DURING CYCLIC LOADING USING AN IN-SITU PIEZOELECTRIC SENSOR

摘要

This article investigates the Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) potential of a piezoceramic (PZT) disk embedded into a Polymer-Matrix Composite (PMC) material submitted to a cyclic loading test. To do so, several samples were extracted from a PMC (glass fiber/polyester resin) plate manufactured using the Liquid Resin Infusion (LRI) technique, each one embedded with a connected PZT transducer. Cyclic (loading-bearing-unloading) incremental tensile tests were then performed on these embedded samples until failure. The electrical capacitance signature of the PZT was acquired during the whole test using a multimeter, and all samples were equipped with a multi-instrumentation system including two Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) devices: two Acoustic Emission (AE) sensors and Stereo-Digital Image Correlation (S-DIC) cameras on both face and thickness of each specimen. Results showed that the in-situ PZT capacitance signature is able to follow well the mechanical loading, and allows to give information on the start and progression of the damage happening inside the tested material when comparing the capacitance signal with the two other NDT signatures. The PZT can thus be considered as an efficient NDT device for real-time SHM of PMC structures.