SMART PIEZO-ENABLED GLASS-FABRIC-REINFORCED COMPOSITE STRUCTURE: EXPERIMENTS AND FINITE-ELEMENT MODELING

This paper deals with an experimental and finite-element investigation of smart polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) embedded with a glass-fabric-reinforced polymer (GFRP) beam structure under vibration. PVDFs are well known stretchy polymer that process the properties of both piezoelectric and pyroelectric materials. An LDT0-028K PVDF polymer film is proposed in the present paper. Glass-fiber-reinforced polymer is a lightweight composite material having a high specific strength and specific stiffness, due to which it has a wide range of applications in the field of smart composite structures. GFRP laminates and beam structures are fabricated in the present investigation through a vacuum-assisted resin-infusion process (VARIP). Mechanical characterization in accordance with ASTM standards were also carried out for the purpose of the estimation of uni-directional mechanical properties of GFRP, which are a pre-requisite for finite-element simulations. Both the experiments and the finite-element modelling were carried out for the smart piezo composite beam structure under forced vibration conditions. The finite-element computations were incorporated in the present study using ANSYS (R) 16.0 Mechanical APDL. The results of the experimental and FEM investigations show a deviation of around 6.2 %, with the experimental values validating the FEM analysis. Based on the harmonic response of the smart piezo-composite beam, a micro-energy harvesting study was established with reference to the varying frequency and voltage.