Development of PZT fiber rosette to locate acoustic source

Because of their electro-mechanical coupling property, Lead-Zirconate-Titanate (PZT) materials have been widely used for ultrasonic wave sensing and actuation in structural health monitoring applications. In this paper, a PZT rosette concept is proposed to conduct Lamb wave-based damage detection in panel-like structures by exploring its best directional sensing capability. First, a directivity study was conducted to investigate sensing of flexural Lamb wave propagation using a PZT fiber having d33 effects. Then, commercial off-the-shelf PZT fibers were polarized in-house in order to construct the PZT rosette configuration, in which three PZT fibers are oriented at 0°, 45°, 90°, respectively. Since Lamb wave responses are directly related to measured PZT fiber voltage signals, a simple interrogation scheme was developed to calculate principal strain direction in order to locate an acoustic source. Comprehensive tests were conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed PZT rosette using an aluminum plate. It is shown that the PZT rosette is able to sense Lamb wave responses and accurately locate an acoustic source. We expect to further evaluate the PZT rosette performance when damages are introduced.