Sensors and Actuators A 260 (2017) 185–190

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Sensors and Actuators A: Physical

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/sna

A novel thickness polarized d15 shear piezoelectric fiber composites夽

Xi Yuan, Ziqi Chen, Mingliang Wu, Hang Luo, Chao Chen, Kechao Zhou, Dou Zhang ∗
State Key Laboratory of Powder Metallurgy, Central South University, Changsha, 410083, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: As smart materials, piezoelectric ceramics played an important role in actuation, sensing, structural health
Received 29 November 2016 monitoring and vibration damping systems. This letter reports a novel structure of shear piezoelectric
Received in revised form 13 March 2017 fiber composites (SPFC), which was polarized in the thickness direction, and drived on the transverse
Accepted 13 April 2017
direction with interdigitated electrodes. Under a driving condition of 270 V at 0.1 Hz, a fixed SPFC showed
Available online 20 April 2017
a shear strain of 176.5 ppm and a Mylar membrane cantilever beam structure exhibited a tip displacement
of 0.343 mm, corresponding to an effective piezoelectric constant d15 of 400 pm/V. These results provide
Keywords:
a novel idea for the SPFC applied in actuation and vibration control areas.
Shear piezoelectric fiber composites
Thickness-polarized © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Shear strain
d15
Actuation

1. Introduction
Over the past few decades, the design and applications of smart
materials and structures is a rapidly emerging field [1]. Piezoce-
ramics are widely used for sensing or actuating due to excellent
capacity of instant dynamic response [2,3]. To access the preferred
longitudinal d33 effect and overcome the fragility of piezoceremic,
active fiber composites (AFC) which comprised of circular cross-
sectional piezoceramic fibers and interdigitated electrodes (IDE)
was developed at MIT [4]. After that, Macro-fiber composites (MFC),
employing rectangular cross-sectional fibers instead, was invented
by NASA Langley Research Center [5] and had larger contact area
between the electrode and fiber comparing to AFC. The two struc-
tures were referred to piezoelectric fiber composites (PFC), which
combined the excellent piezoelectric properties with good flexibil-
ity and durability offered by epoxy matrix [5,6]. Many applications
have been explored for PFC, including structural health monitoring
systems [7], actuation [8], sensing [9], and active/passive vibration
damping systems [10,11], etc.
Recently a new type of PFC, shear piezoelectric fiber composites
(SPFC) [12,13], has received much attention. The piezoelectric fibers
were oriented perpendicular to the direction of motion, in order to
induce the transverse shear-mode (or d15 -mode) response in the
piezoceramic fibers [12]. For most piezoceremics, the piezoelectric
夽 Selected paper from the 13th International Workshop on Piezoelectric Materials
and Applications in Actuators & Energy Conversion Materials and Devices 2016,
21–24 August 2016, Jeju, Korea.
∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: dzhang@csu.edu.cn (D. Zhang).
coefficient d15 was 50–70% higher than d33 coefficient [14]. More-
over, the SPFC could work very effectively in a sandwich structure
when being placed as the central active layer in the main structure,
and could induce transverse shear strain used for bending actu-
ation, active/passive bending vibration control, torsion actuation
and active twist control. In particular, such sandwiched structure
produced lower stress on the interfaces in the composites, com-
paring to d33 typed PFC [15,16], which was generally bonded to the
surface of the main structure. The SPFC has been mainly studied
by numerical calculation or finite element analysis (FEM) [17–19].
These studies showed the SPFC could be more compatible for stiffer
structures, higher frequencies and non-standard shaped structures
than traditional PFC [20]. However, only few experimental works
were reported so far. A first longitudinally polarized SPFC was fab-
ricated on the basis of commercial d31 -mode MFC with driving
voltages just under 90 V [21].
In this work, a novel structure of SPFC was proposed for the first
time and fabricated experimentally to demonstrate its actuating
performance. Fig. 1a shows the schematic structure of SPFC, com-
prising of central PZT/epoxy active layer, top and bottom electrode
layers with interdigitated electrodes (IDE), acrylic and polyimide
layers for the assembly of the composites. The polarization direc-
tion of PZT fiber was longitudinal for the reported SPFC [21], but
the SPFC we proposed was polarized on the direction of thickness
(z-direction), which was easier in aspects of the polarization due
to much reduced voltage and reduced risk of breakdown. The driv-
ing voltage was applied on the transverse direction (x-direction)
by the IDE, resulting in a shear deformation on the longitudinal
cross-section (x-z plane) of the PZT fibers, as shown in Fig. 1b.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sna.2017.04.029
0924-4247/© 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
186 X. Yuan et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 260 (2017) 185–190
Fig. 1. (a) Illustration of SPFC structure, (b) The cross-section of typical PZT/epoxy unit with IDE.
Fig. 2. Electrical impedance of SPFC and PFC: (a) Impedance of proposed d15 SPFC, (b) Impedance of d33 PFC.
2. Experimental procedures
The proposed SPFC was fabricated by following process. At first,
the PZT-5H ceramic sheet was polarized at 2.5 kV/mm for 20 min at
80 ◦ C. Then PZT/epoxy composite was fabricated by cutting-filling
method. The grooves of PZT ceramics were cut off by using the blade
of 500 ␮m thickness, followed by the filling of the epoxy (Araldite
2020, USA). After curing, both sides were grinded off to the thick-
ness of 200 ␮m. The volume fraction of PZT fibers in such PZT/epoxy
composite was 56.6%. Similar to AFC and MFC, our proposed SPFC
was assembled by the polyimide and epoxy resin. The effective area
of the SPFC was 5×15 mm.
The electrical impedance of typical shear-mode SPFC and
longitudinal-mode PFC was detected by Precision Impedance Ana-
lyzer (4294A; Agilent Technologies, Santa Clara, USA). The shear
displacement of SPFC and the tip displacement of a cantilever beam
were measured by the Laser displacement sensor (MTI-2000; MTI
Instruments, NY, USA).
3. Results and discussion
The electrical impedance of typical shear-mode SPFC and
longitudinal-mode PFC was measured by Precision Impedance Ana-
lyzer, as shown in Fig. 2. For d33 PFC, the main vibration mode was
length extension, so the equation was [22]:
1 by the laser displacement sensor (MTI 2000).
fl =  (1)
2l s11 E
where fl was the resonant frequency, l was the length of resonant
vibration direction of piezoceramics (15 mm),  was the density of
piezoceramics, s11 E was the compliance coefficients of piezoelectric
material at constant electric field.
As the thickness shear vibration was the main cause in SPFC, the
equation could be:
1
ft =  (2)
2t s55 E
where, ft was the resonant frequency of thickness shear vibration, t
was the thickness of PZT fibers (200 ␮m), s55 E was the compliance
coefficients of piezoelectric material at constant electric field.
The results showed that the resonant frequencies of SPFC and
PFC were 4.13 MHz and 58.3 kHz, respectively (Fig. 2a and b). As
l/t = 75, the results probably accord with the shear vibration mode
in SPFC. Good dynamic response of SPFC was confirmed by the peak
value of the phase angle at resonant frequency.
A strain gage glued on the side face of a shear mode piezoce-
ramics (the y-z plane) can detect the shear strain directly. However,
as the SPFC was too thin, the strain gage (3.1 × 1.0 mm) could not
be utilized. An indirect method was therefore employed to detect
the shear deformation, as shown in Fig. 3a and b. The SPFC was
glued on a fixed platform with a polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE)
cube attached on the upper surface. The side face of the PTFE was
kept strictly parallel with the PZT fibers (y-direction) in the SPFC.
When the SPFC was actuated, the movement of the upper face led to
PTFE an x-direction horizontal displacement, which was measured
Considering that large actuating electric field may lead to
the depolarization of PZT fibers, the strain properties of SPFC
was detected initially with the voltage of −90V to + 90 V, which
was gradually increased to −270 V − + 270 V. The horizontal dis-
 X. Yuan et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 260 (2017) 185–190
Fig. 3. (a) Schematic diagram of shear displacement test platform; (b) actual test platform; the shear deformation of SPFC under −270- + 270 V at 1 Hz (c) and at different driving frequencies (d).

187
188 X. Yuan et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 260 (2017) 185–190
Fig. 4. Schematic diagram of displacement test platform (a), tip displacement of SPFC at 0.1 Hz (b), 1 Hz (c), 10 Hz (c) and 100 Hz (c).
placement of the PTFE cube could indirectly indicate the shear
deformation u1 on the upper surface of SPFC, reaching to 49 nm
under the alternating excitation voltage of −270 to + 270 V at 1 Hz,
as shown in Fig. 3c. It can be noticed that the horizontal shear dis-
placement was hysteretic with the excitation voltage, similar to
that of d33 typed PFC. Fig. 3d shows the shear deformations with
the variations of driving voltages at frequencies of 0.1, 1, 10 and
100 Hz. According to the Eq. (3) [23]
tanS 5 = u1 /t
S5 was the shear strain, u1 referred to the shear deformation
and t referred to the thickness of SPFC, as the shear deformation u1
could reach to 60 nm, the shear strain S5 was 176.5 ppm under the
voltage of 270 V at 0.1 Hz. According to the Eq. (4) [23]
d15 = S 5 /E 1
d15 was the effective piezoelectric constant of SPFC, E1 was the ac
electric field applied along x-direction in the PZT fibers, which was
4.37 × 105 V/m. Therefore, the effective piezoelectric constant d15
of SPFC was 400 pm/V. The effective d15 constant of SPFC was lower
than d33 value of PZT-5H, partly due to the mechanical buffering
effect of the epoxy matrix. Meanwhile, it was reported in reference
[24] that the effective piezoelectric constant of piezoelectric fiber
composites was generally decreased with the decrease of the vol-
ume fraction of piezoceramic phase. The volume fraction of epoxy
matrix in our SPFC composite was 43.4%, and the effective vol-
ume of PZT phase was rather low comparing to the pure PZT-5H
ceramic. Both aspects mainly resulted in the reduced value of d15
in our SPFC. The displacements became lower when the driving fre-
quency was higher. Similar phenomena have been widely reported
in piezoelectric materials and devices [25].
Two pieces of Mylar membrane was utilized to sandwich a SPFC
and form a cantilever beam structure. The width and length of the
beam was 13 × 40 mm, as shown in Fig. 4a. A laser sensor was placed
at the tip of the cantilever beam to detect the tip displacement.
Fig. 4b shows the tip displacement under different driving voltages
at 0.1 Hz, reaching to 0.343 mm under the voltage of 270 V. Fig. 4c
revealed that the tip displacement decreased significantly by the
acceleration of frequency.
(3)
4. Conclusions
We presented a novel structure of SPFC which was easy to fab-
ricate and showed good actuating performance. It was polarized
on the direction of thickness, while the excitation voltage was
applied via the IDE. The PZT/epoxy layer in the SPFC was produced
(4) by cutting-filling method and assembled in polyimide film. The
impedance results showed good dynamic response of such SPFC.
Under a driving condition of 270 V at 0.1 Hz, a fixed SPFC showed a
shear strain of 176.5 ppm and a cantilever beam sandwiched with a
SPFC resulted in a tip displacement of 0.343 mm, corresponding to
an effective piezoelectric constant d15 of 400 pm/V. The proposed
SPFC could be used as an embedded actuator applied in deformation
control and vibration control areas.
Acknowledgments
This work was financially supported by the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (Nos: 51672311, 51602350), Hunan
Doctoral Research Innovation Project (CX2014B055) and State key
Laboratory of Powder Metallurgy, Central South University, Chang-
sha, China.
 X. Yuan et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 260 (2017) 185–190 189

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190 X. Yuan et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 260 (2017) 185–190
Kechao Zhou is a professor from State Key Laboratory of
Powder Metallurgy, Central South University, and is cur-
rently the Deputy President of Central South University.
He received his Ph.D. degree from Central South University
in 1998.
Dou Zhang is a professor from State Key Laboratory of
Powder Metallurgy, Central South University. He received
his B. E. and M. E. Degrees from Wuhan University of Tech-
nology in 1992 and 1995, respectively, and Ph.D. degree
from School of Metallurgy & Materials, University of Birm-
ingham in 2006. His research interests focus on the areas
of ferro/piezoelectric ceramics, composites and intelligent
device, energy harvesting and storage. He has published
more than 100 journal papers. He is currently serving as
an editorial board member of Journal of Electroceramics.