Application of Macrofiber Composite for Smart Transducer of Lamb Wave Inspection

Abstract

Macrofiber composite (MFC) has been developed recently as a new type of smart material for piezoelectric transducers. It shows advantages over traditional piezoelectric ceramic materials (PZT) including the method of application, sensitivity, and cost. It can be embedded on the structure, which provides the possibility to monitor the structural health in real time. In this paper, the feasibility of this transducer for the Lamb wave inspection has been experimentally explored. A pair of MFC patches is bonded on a 2 mm thick aluminum plate, and it has been demonstrated that the dispersive characteristics of S0 and A0 modes, generated and detected by MFC patches, agreed well with the theory. The influence of the bonding condition of the transducer was also tested to show that rigid bonding is required to assure a high amplitude signal. In order to illustrate the performance of defect detection, an artificial defect fabricated on the surface of a specimen was inspected in the pitch-catch mode. The results showed that the MFC transducer is a promising Lamb wave transducer for nondestructive testing (NDT) and structural health monitoring (SHM).