Multiphysics simulation method of lamb wave propagation with piezoelectric transducers under load condition

Lamb Wave (LW) simulation under time-varying conditions is an effective and low cost way to study the problem of the low reliability of the structural health monitoring methods based on the LW and Piezoelectric Transducer (PT). In this paper, a multiphysics simulation method of the LW propagation with the PTs under load condition is proposed. With this method, two key mechanisms of the load influence on the LW propagation are considered and coupled with each other. The first mechanism is the acoustoelastic effect which is the main reason of the LW velocity change. The second key mechanism is the load influence on piezoelectric materials, which results in a change of the amplitude. Based on the computational platform of the COMSOL Multiphysics, a multiphysics simulation model of the LW propagation with the PTs under load condition is established. The simulation model includes two physical phenomena. The first one is called solid mechanics, which is used to simulate the acoustoelastic effect being combined with the hyperelastic material properties of the structure in which the LW propagates. The second one is called electromechanical coupling, which considers the simulation of the piezoelectric effect of the PTs for the LW excitation and sensing. To simulate the load influence on piezoelectric materials, a non-linear numerical model of the relationship between the load and the piezoelectric coefficient d31 is established based on an experiment of the load influence on the LW. The simulation results under uniaxial tensile load condition are obtained and are compared with the data obtained from the experiment. It shows that the variations of the phase velocity and amplitude of the LW obtained from the simulation model match the experimental results well.