Piezoelectric composite apparatus and related methods

摘要

A piezoelectric planar composite apparatus to provide health monitoring of a structure and associated methods are provided. The piezoelectric planar composite apparatus includes a piezoelectric electric material layer, multiple electrodes positioned in electrical contact with the piezoelectric material layer, and multiple sets of electrode interconnect conductors each positioned in electrical contact with a different subset of the of the electrodes and positioned to form multiple complementary electrode patterns. Each of the complementary electrode patterns is positioned to form an electric field having an electric field axis oriented along a different physical axis from that of an electric field formed by at least one other of the complementary electrode patterns. The interconnect conductors can be distributed over several electrode interconnect conductor carrying layers to enhance formation of the different complementary electrode patterns.