Abstract

As substantive components of intelligent structures, piezoelectric sensors need to perform their intended function without any spuriousness. In this work, a mathematical model has been developed to characterize the performance degradation of a piezoelectric sensor due to its debonding from a smart composite laminate. The electromechanically coupled governing equation of motion is developed by incorporating improved layerwise theory and higher electric potential field along with the finite element method and Extended Hamilton’s principle. The problem governing equation is solved by Newmark time-integration algorithm to assess the performance of a piezoelectric sensor in the presence of partial debonding at the edge and inner side of the sensor. The partially debonded piezoelectric sensor is investigated in frequency domain via power spectral density of the sensor output. The degradative performance of the partially debonded sensor is generalized for random loadings via basic signal statistics. The numerical results show that the developed model recover the presence and extent of partial debonding between the piezoelectric sensor and the host laminate.