| Structural damage detection at the earliest possible stage is very important in the aerospace industry to prevent major failures. In this work, a potential cost-effective crack detection method using piezoelectric strips bonded on the structure was studied. A crack model was developed and validated. Static, modal and transient dynamic analysises are performed for the case of piezoelectric strips bonded to the structure by using a finite element method to explore the effectiveness of the crack detection method. Panel methods are used for steady flow problems of fixed wings in order to calculate the pressure distributions on the wing surface.;A flat wing with a crack subjected to aerodynamic load was simulated to predict the presence of the crack. It is found that the voltage difference between the piezoelectric strips bonded at the same location (one on the upper side and the other on the lower side) can be used to predict the presence of the crack. For wing structure crack detection, the sensitivity is limited if the steady aerodynamic load is used as an excitation. |
