PARAMETRIC STUDY OF SEGMENTED TRANSDUCERS LAMINATED ON CYLINDRICAL-SHELLS .1. SENSOR PATCHES

The spatial characteristics, modal filtering and modal sensitivities o f distributed segmented sensor patches laminated on a cylindrical shel l are investigated. A sensor equation of a generic shell sensor patch reveals that the output signal is determined by a number of factors, s uch as geometries, material properties, mode numbers, sensor locations , spatial distributions, strains, etc. An arbitrary sensor patch and a lso quarterly segmented sensor patches are investigated. All quadruple s of shell natural modes are not observable in the quarterly segmented sensor configuration, due to the charge averaging on effective surfac e electrodes. The total sensor sensitivity of a sensor patch is compos ed of a membrane sensitivity and a bending sensitivity which are relat ed to the membrane strain and the bending strain, respectively. Based on the modal sensitivities, a number of sensor parameters (e.g., senso r thickness, shell thickness, curvature angles and shell sizes) are ev aluated, and their membrane, bending and total sensitivities are compa red. (C) 1996 Academic Press Limited