Impact and acoustic emission performance of polyvinylidene fluoride sensor embedded in glass fiber-reinforced polymer composite structure

Smart materials find vital applications in the aerospace industry due to their ability to adapt to surrounding conditions according to design requirements and applicability. Piezoelectric materials are commonly used under the category of smart materials for transducer applications. Among piezoelectric materials, piezo polymer polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) is widely used for structural health monitoring (SHM) applications of composite structures, acoustic emission (AE) sensor, accelerometer, strain gauge, pressure sensor, and so on because of its outstanding piezo stress constant ( g ₃₃ ), piezo strain constant ( d ₃₃ ), flexibility, and lightweight. In this article, glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) laminates have been prepared by embedding the PVDF sensor into GFRP for the first time. A detailed study has been done on the behavior and characterization of the PVDF sensor embedded in GFRP. The PVDF sensors embedded in laminates were subjected to impact test, where a constant weight of 5.5 kg was dropped from a height of 10–60 mm in the interval of 10 mm, and the voltage response of the PVDF sensor was recorded. Sensitivity analysis and AE test of the PVDF sensor in GFRP were also carried out. This is useful for various aerospace applications especially for SHM of aircraft.