Fault Detection of Boundaries of Plates using Segmented Piezoelectric Films

Abstract

This paper considers a method of fault detection of boundaries of plates by using segmented piezoelectric films under sinusoidal excitation. Boundaries are modeled by springs and one of them varies from healthy state. To detect the broken boundary, we examine minimum values of a cost function of springs at every boundaries and regard the boundary which gives minimum cost as the broken one. Owing to the preferable properties of piezoelectric film, it is expected that it can be applied to structures easily and has high sensitivity to the changes of the boundary condition. Numerical examples are shown to illustrate the efficiency.