A boundary element method for detection of damages and self-diagnosis of transducers using electro-mechanical impedance

In this paper, for the first time, a boundary element method (BEM) for modelling the electro-mechanical responses of three-dimensional structures is reported. Within an electro-mechanically coupled system, the host structure is formulated using the 3D dual boundary element method in order to be able to take into account the possible existence of cracks, and the piezoelectric transducers, which are the key to measuring electro-mechanical impedance (EMI), are modelled using a semi-analytical finite element approach. The analyses of the coupled system are performed in the frequency domain. The EMI signatures computed by the BEM developed in this work show excellent agreement with those obtained using the finite element method and from experiments. Using parametric studies, the potential of using EMI signatures for the detection of damages in structures and for the self-diagnosis of transducers is assessed.