Numerical evaluation of acoustic emission (AE) sensors by lead-zirconate-titanate (PZT) geometric design

Abstract

The effect of geometric variation of lead zirconate titanate (PZT) layers on the impedance performance of cylindrical acoustic emission (AE) sensors is investigated through numerical simulations. The finite element numerical models are developed with the use of the simulation program ANSYS and verified by comparing the impedance-frequency responses of the numerical simulations with those of the experiments. The effect of the dimensional changes of the individual PZT disk and ring on the impedance performance is investigated. We devise a total of 13 sensor designs consisting of a disk and either a ring or two rings with varying dimensions, and their impedance -based performances are quantitatively evaluated by counting the number of impedance resonant frequencies nr and average impedance at the resonant frequencies Zr,avg. As a result, it is discovered that the performance of the AE sensors is dominantly influenced by the total area of piezoelectric material At and the area ratio of the disk to ring Rdr. These two geometric indicators might be useful to enhance the performance of the AE sensors in various applications.