Development of Adaptive Structures with Encapsulated PZT-Patches

To reduce the negative effects of accelerated mass lightweight design has become very important for a great variety of industrial applications. Unfortunately lightweight structures often suffer from vibrational sensitivity, tendency to buckling, and susceptibility to damage. A promising way to solve these problems is the use of multifunctional materials. Arising deformations, accelerations or other physical quantities can be detected by sensors, technically processed with suitable real-time controllers and eliminated with structural conformable embedded actuators. Because of many excellent properties (low energy consumption in quasi static applications, high efficiency, fast response, etc.) piezoelectric materials are in the center of interest. Here thin monolithic piezoceramic wafers are used as structural actuators and sensors. Significant differences between mechanical and thermal properties of the piezoceramic material demand sophisticated manufacturing techniques to attach these piezoceramic wafers on metal substrates or to integrate them into carbon fiber composite structures. A technology has been developed to pre-encapsulate different kinds of piezoceramic materials to improve the handling of the extremely brittle material for further processing. In this paper we will focus on the development of manufacturing techniques for adaptive structures. Experiments have been made to investigate the active and passive properties of the multifunctional composite