Electro-Mechanical Fatigue Behavior of a Quasi-Isotropic Laminate with an Embedded Piezoelectric Actuator

摘要

This study primarily investigated the electro-mechanical fatigue behavior of the embedded piezoelectric actuators in graphite/epoxy laminate with a lay-up of 0 / +/- 45 / 90s. A secondary focus was the investigation of the mechanical fatigue effects of the 0 / 0 / +/- 45 / 0 / 0 / 90s laminate with embedded PZT under tensile loading. All the fatigue tests were conducted with a triangular loading waveform which had a frequency of 10 Hz and with R=0. 1. In the electro-mechanical testing, the embedded actuator was excited by a -10 V to -100 V or a 10 V to 100 V voltage input, which resulted in either in-phase or out-of-phase electrically induced strain waveform with respect to the mechanical loading or strain. It was found that the embedded PZTs performed very well during the out-of-phase electro-mechanical and low stress fatigue conditions when the applied strain was within the operating range of PZT. Beyond the upper strain limit, the voltage output of the PZT was primarily influenced by the mechanical fatigue loading. Results from the high stress fatigue tests showed that the embedded piezoelectric actuators did not have significant effect on the tensile strength of the laminates.