Electromechanical impedance method of fiber-reinforced plastic adhesive joints in corrosive environment using a reusable piezoelectric device

Various nondestructive evaluation techniques exist for structural health monitoring of structures such as acoustic emission, ultrasonic impedance, and impact echo testing. However, these techniques often require expensive and sophisticated hardware with expert operators, limiting their applications to a certain aspect. On the other hand, a relatively new technique known as electromechanical impedance–based structural health monitoring has shown promising results as a local nondestructive evaluation method. To date, only a few numbers of studies have been conducted to develop a reusable lead zirconate titanate sensor for the electromechanical impedance method as majority of researchers have focused on damage detection performance. In this study, a reusable method for the electromechanical impedance method was proposed by using a lead zirconate titanate patch to eliminate the trial-and-error approach to minimize the time requirement for the electromechanical impedance method while reducing the cost for multiple measurements. The proposed reusable device was used to evaluate the damage of the adhesive layer between the fiber-reinforced plastic plates subjected to a corrosive solution while investigating the reliability performance of the device.