Keywords:
Active: real-time, adaptive sensing & actuating
Control: sensing & actuating structure to achieve desired response (shape, vibration, damage detection & mitigation)
Sensing: transducing mechanical structural responses into electrical signals available for measurement & thus detection (sensing)
Actuating: transducing electrical signals into mechanical forces and pressures to change structure deformations into desired responses
Thin: insignificant shear deformation thus stresses, mainly in-plane axial, bending and torsional deformations
Laminated: layered and bonded / embedded together ( perfect vs. imperfect delamination)
Composite: materials are non-homogeneous, anisotropic and bonded together
Plate: 2 dimensions are significantly larger than 1 dimension, flat or curvilinear
Excitation: loading and/or forced displacement/acceleration applied to structure
Piezoelectric: materials possessing electro-mechanical and mechano-electrical properties, discovered by the Curie brothers in 1880, PVDF,PZT (lead, zinc, titanium), Ni-Ti etc.
Coupling: the intrinsic interaction mechanisms between a few individual components, for example, plate strain displacement coupled with laminate equations = structural responses
Bonding: Foreign bodies (piezo patch) physically attached to the surface of a substrate (plate) through binding medium (epoxy coatings)
Embedding: patch laminated into the internal layers of a composite structure
Voltage: applied electric field per actuator, Ei=vi/tI
Collocation: sensor & actuator are co-located at the exact same position in the structure (bonded / embedded) such that the actuation signal = -- (sensing signal)
Intelligent: adaptation to the dynamically changing environment according to predefined conditions
Smart: Shape Memory Alloy Research Team, changing of material strain / pressure to detect changes and mitigate undesired ones
FEM: finite-element method, super-approximate method, dividing the structure into discrete elements with associated nodes in each element, the physical responses are formulated and iteratively calculated w.r.t. to the nodes of the elements. Thus, a structure analysed with a finer mesh with more elements & nodes would be closer to the actual response than a coarser mesh with few elements & nodes.
Mesh: the elements formed in FEM, looking like a mesh wrapped around the structure
Approximation: FEM gives only approximate answers, with no exact analytical solution. The finer the mesh, the better & closer the approximated answer is to the actual one.