Predictive Simulation of Piezoelectric Wafer Active Sensors for Structural Health Monitoring

Piezoelectric wafer active sensors (PWAS) are lightweight and inexpensive enablers for structural health monitoring (SHM). After a brief review of PWAS physical principles, basic modeling, and PWAS ultrasonic guide-wave methods, the focus of the paper shifts towards the modeling and simulation. The predictive simulation includes both analytical and finite element analyses. The analytical methods have the advantage of expedience and speed; thus, they allow wide parameter studies. However, analytical methods are limited to simple geometries. Finite element methods can model complicated real-world geometries, but they are computationally intensive and require fine meshes/time intervals for accuracy. The relative advantages and limitations of the two approaches are also discussed. The paper ends with conclusions and suggestions for further work.