Response of piezoelectric materials on thermomechanical shocking and electrical shocking for aerospace applications

Piezoelectric materials are widely used as smart structure in various aerospace applications as they can generate voltage, store charge and drive microelectronics directly because of its ability to sense, actuate and harvest energy. It is a well known phenomenon in terms of the linear electromechanical interaction between mechanical and electrical state. It is actively used in aerospace structural health monitoring, due to the high stiffness and drive capacity depending on the voltage, widespread mechanical properties and their interactions. In this research work Barium Titanate (BaTiO3) is shocked by variable mechanical loading under different thermal and electrical shocking conditions for behavior analysis. A test rig is constructed on the basis of equivalent circuit method to perform experimentation. The relationship between electrical shocking in terms of frequency and peak to peak voltage at variable thermo-mechanical shocking conditions has been developed and analyzed. The variable frequency shocking represented one of the most important parameter to characterize and design the piezoelectric material, especially when it relates to design of intelligent structures for aerospace industry. Effect of thermo mechanical loading, frequency and resistance to peak to peak voltage is predicted experimentally and numerically. Abaqus is used for numerical simulations. Numerical model constructed for BaTiO3 in this research predicts the actual behavior for voltage generation with accuracy of 10%.