Parallel and individual interrogations of piezo-impedance transducers for damage detection

Lead zirconate titanate (PZT)-based piezo-impedance transducers have been successfully used in structural health monitoring (SHM) of various engineering structures in the recent years. To effectively monitor structural health, identification of damage location is of great importance. Although a single PZT is sensitive enough to detect damage, it is insufficient to indicate the location of damage. Therefore, in this study, nine PZT transducers are surface bonded on an aluminum plate to investigate the feasibility of locating the damages induced in the plate. At each damage state, electromechanical admittance signatures of all PZT sensors are recorded and analyzed using the root mean square deviation (RMSD) index. Results show that the damage location can be estimated by the RMSD patterns obtained from both parallel and individual interrogations of PZT_s.