Experimental Evaluation of Wearable Piezo Ring for Bolted Connection Monitoring Using the Active Sensing Approach

As a safe and reliable connection, bolted connection is widely used in various structural systems. Monitoring the bolted connection is beneficial to ensure the safety of the whole structure. In this study, a wearable piezoelectric ring based on piezoelectric material is designed and it can be easily integrated into the bolt connection as a washer. To verify the feasibility of wearable piezoelectric ring, single-bolt looseness experiment based on wearable piezoelectric ring was carried out. Firstly, the wearable piezoelectric ring was installed on the bolted joint, acting as a piezoelectric sensor, and multiple piezoelectric actuators were installed in different location of the plate surface. Then, different torque level was applied to the bolt and the stress wave signals were obtained by piezoelectric active sensing technique. Finally, the recursive analysis method was introduced to extract nonlinear recursive features of the stress wave signals. The experimental results showed that the change of the bolt looseness could be qualitatively characterized by the phase space trajectory and the recurrence plots. Moreover, the recursive entropy could quantitatively characterize the bolt looseness, showing a bright prospect in monitoring the bolt looseness using the wearable piezoelectric ring.