Numerical Analysis of Piezoelectric Active Repair in the Presence of Frictional Contact Conditions

The increasing development of smart materials, such as piezoelectric and shape memory alloys, has opened new opportunities for improving repair techniques. Particularly, active repairs, based on the converse piezoelectric effect, can increase the life of a structure by reducing the crack opening. A deep characterization of the electromechanical behavior of delaminated composite structures, actively repaired by piezoelectric patches, can be achieved by considering the adhesive layer between the host structure and the repair and by taking into account the frictional contact between the crack surfaces. In this paper, Boundary Element (BE) analyses performed on delaminated composite structures repaired by active piezoelectric patches are presented. A two-dimensional boundary integral formulation for piezoelectric solids based on the multi-domain technique to model the composite host damaged structures and the bonded piezoelectric patches is employed. An interface spring model is also implemented to take into account the finite stiffness of the bonding layers and to model the frictional contact between the delamination surfaces, by means of an iterative procedure. The effect of the adhesive between the plies of piezoelectric bimorph devices on the electromechanical response is first pointed out for both sensing and actuating behavior. Then, the effect of the frictional contact condition on the fracture mechanics behavior of actively repaired delaminated composite structures is investigated.