RESEARCH ARTICLE
Application of Piezoelectric Materials on Repair of Delaminated Structures
Quan Wang*
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2007Volume: 1
First Page: 25
Last Page: 29
Publisher ID: TOCIEJ-1-25
DOI: 10.2174/1874149500701010025
Article History:
Received Date: 21/4/2007Revision Received Date: 7/5/2007
Acceptance Date: 10/5/2007
Electronic publication date: 25/5/2007
Collection year: 2007
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
The potential of piezoelectric ceramics on repair of delaminated structures subjected to a static loading is researched in the letter. A sliding fracture mode on two tips of a delaminated beam structure was uncovered by the author in a previous report. The stress singularity due to the fracture mode at the tips is attempted to be mended with a pair of piezoelectric patches by virtue of their electro-mechanical characteristics. A developed mechanics model is employed to study the applicability of the piezoelectric materials in repairing four types of delaminated structures, i.e. simply supported, cantilevered, propped cantilevered, and fixed beams. The effectiveness of the proposed method is particularly investigated with respect to the locations of the delamination in both the thickness and longitudinal directions of the beams. It is hoped that the research findings in the letter will promote an application of smart materials to repair delaminated or cracked engineering structures.