Effect of Adhesive Debonding on the Performance of Piezoelectric Sensors in Structural Health Monitoring Systems

Piezoelectric (PZT) ceramic elements are often subjected to complex loads during in- service lifetime in structural health monitoring (SHM) systems, and debonding of both excitation actuators and receiving sensors have a negative effect on the monitoring signals. A first systematic investigation of debonding behaviors by considering actuators and sensors simultaneously was performed in this paper. The debonding areas of actuators were set in different percentage range from 0% to 70%, and sensors in 0%, 20%, 40% and 60%. The signal-based monitoring method was used to extract the characteristic parameters of both the amplitudes and phases of received signals. Experimental results revealed that as the debonding areas of the actuators increase, the normalized amplitude appears a quick decrease before 35% debonding area of actuators and then a slow rise until 60% of debonding reached. This may be explained that the 35% debonding turning point correspond to the coincidence of the excitation frequencies of peripheral actuators with the inherent frequency of the central piezoelectric sensor, and the 60% be the result of the maximum ability of piezoelectric sensor. The degrees of debonding of actuators and sensors also have significant influence on the phase angle offset, with large debonding of actuators increases the phase offset sharply. The research work may provide useful information for practical monitoring of SHM systems.