Structural Health Monitoring with Piezoelectric Wafer Active Sensors

Structural Health Monitoring with Piezoelectric Wafer Active Sensors: With Piezoelectric Wafer Active Sensors, Third Edition provides an authoritative, theoretical, and experimental guide to this fast-paced, interdisciplinary area that has applications across many industries. The book judiciously combines theory, numerical examples, and experiments, providing the background needed to fully understand the physical principles involved in performing structural health monitoring (SHM) with piezoelectric wafer active sensor (PWAS) transducers. Sections cover the fundamental theory relating to SHM, including fracture and failure basics, relevant piezoelectric material properties, vibration modes in different structures, and different wave types, providing the background necessary to understand SHM and apply it to real-world structural challenges.

From there, the book segues to experimental practice, covering several complementary methods of using PWAS transducers for SHM applications, such as propagating guided waves (pitch-catch; pulse-echo; phased-array) and standing guided waves. Numerical examples have been added throughout in support of understanding the underlying theory, and the companion website contains MATLAB code, simulation videos, and other supporting materials. An instructor’s manual is available upon request for teachers using the book in the classroom.

• Includes in-depth coverage of the underlying theory of piezoelectricity, vibration, and wave propagation alongside experimental techniques
• Features step-by-step guidance on the use of piezoelectric wafer active sensors to detect and quantify damage in structures, including clear information on how to interpret sensor signal patterns
• Updates on real-world numerical and modeling examples in each chapter, along with the introduction of new topics and techniques such as flexural vibration energy of a beam, Rayleigh waves, Lamb waves, Helmholtz equations, and the hybrid local field method