This paper presents a piezoelectric sensor diagnostic and validation procedure that performs in-situ monitoring
of the operational status of piezoelectric (PZT) sensor/actuator arrays used in structural health monitoring
(SHM) applications. The validation of the proper function of a sensor/actuator array during operation, is a
critical component to a complete and robust SHM system, especially with the large number of active sensors
typically involved. The method of this technique used to obtain the health of the PZT transducers is to track
their capacitive value, this value manifests in the imaginary part of measured electrical admittance. Degradation
of the mechanical/electrical properties of a PZT sensor/actuator as well as bonding defects between a PZT patch
and a host structure can be identified with the proposed procedure. However, it was found that temperature
variations and changes in sensor boundary conditions manifest themselves in similar ways in the measured electrical
admittances. Therefore, we examined the effects of temperature variation and sensor boundary conditions
on the sensor diagnostic process. The objective of this study is to quantify and classify several key characteristics
of temperature change and to develop effcient signal processing techniques to account for those variations in the
sensor diagnosis process. In addition, we developed hardware capable of making the necessary measurements to
perform the sensor diagnostics and to make impedance-based SHM measurements. The paper concludes with
experimental results to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed technique.
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