Investigation of impact detection characteristics of piezoelectric paint according to boundary conditions

Piezoelectric paint can be used to monitor vibrations or impacts occurring in large engineering structures such as ships and airplanes. This study investigated the impact detection characteristics of a piezoelectric paint sensor and possible errors in detecting impacts according to boundary conditions. The piezoelectric paint sensor used in this study was coated on an aluminum plate with four different electrode areas. After the occurrence of the poling process, the output voltages from the paint sensors were obtained when impact occurred in a certain sensor region. The experimental results revealed a large difference in magnitudes between the sensor signal in the impact region and those in the other regions, and this relation was maintained regardless of the changes in the boundary conditions.