The piezoelectric actuator has gained popularity over the last few years. Attention has been directed towards the study of their electromechanical response in active repair and the control of damaged structures. This has been made possible through the development of various numerical and analytical techniques for such studies. The shift of focus towards the piezoelectric based approaches has been due to their advantages, which include strategic cost benefits in maintenance, as well as an increase in the life cycle of the repaired structures. Furthermore, adhesively bonded joints are widely used in the manufacturing and repairing of structures in many industries, especially automotive and aerospace engineering. This is due to the requirement for lightweight materials as well as the potential adhesive used to join materials with different characteristics. The piezoelectric actuator has also shown the capacity in controlling and lowering the shear stress concentration and joint edge peel in adhesively bonded joint systems. The structure’s control of stress and repair can generally be viewed as a reinforcement that influences the structure’s damage tolerance. Therefore, the interest of this review is on the applications of the piezoelectric actuators in both structural damage and the bonded adhesive joint system. The specific goal is to recognize the contemporary scientific challenges, including future opportunities.

Active repairs using smart materials such as piezoelectric actuators can play a significant role in reducing the crack damage propagation in engineering structures. This study analytically and numerically investigated the active repair of center-cracked plates using piezoelectric actuators. First, the stress intensity factor (SIF) for a center-cracked plate due to stress produced by a piezoelectric actuator is analytically modeled. This analytical model is obtained by applying the method of weight functions. In the second step, the solution is found for the center-cracked plate due to external loading from known linear elastic fracture mechanics. These solutions are then superimposed, taking into account the superposition principle to yield the total stress intensity factor for the integrated piezoelectric actuator to the center-cracked plate. Finally, the proposed theoretical model is verified by finite element simulation. The results indicated that the relative errors of the analytical model and the FEA results are less than 5% in all the cases studied in this paper.

This paper focuses on finding the optimal location for a piezoelectric patch for minimizing the settling time of an excited isotropic and orthotropic plate. COMSOL Multiphysics has been used to design and model the plate with PID controller. Classical Optimization tool called Parametric Sweep has been used to achieve the objective of the experiment. Five different stacking sequences were used in the study of orthotropic plate. The results obtained by the FEA software indicated that by placing the piezoelectric patches at the optimal location, the settling time of a plate can decrease by 40% compared to placing it at the centre of the fixed end.

This review paper focuses on the detailed technique and process of fiber fabrication until it becomes composite which is useful for the manufacturing industry. The most famous fabrication methods are the open and closed mould. In general, open mould is a method which exposes the specimen to the atmosphere and the surface condition is not controlled. Close mould, however, is the opposite to open mould, that is in closed conditions without direct contact of the atmosphere and the surface condition is controllable. The manufacturing process techniques are presented comparatively. Discussion on fiber type that is more suitable for specific techniques are also presented in this paper.

Natural, short, untreated and randomly oriented oil palm empty fruit bunch fiber reinforced epoxy composites were manufactured using vacuum bagging technique with 20% fiber volume composition. The performance of the composite was evaluated as an alternative to synthetic or conventional reinforced composites. Tensile properties such as tensile strength, modulus of elasticity and Poisson's ratio were compared to the tensile properties of pure epoxy obtained via tensile tests as per ASTM D 638 specifications using Universal Testing Machine INSTRON 5582. The tensile properties of oil palm empty fruit bunch fiber reinforced epoxy composites were lower compared to plain epoxy structure with the decrement in performances of 38% for modulus of elasticity and 61% for tensile strength.

This paper presents a finite element analysis to model and analyze composite laminated beams with distributed piezoelectric actuators attached to the top and bottom surfaces considering nonlinear constitutive equations under a high electric field. The static response is presented for piezoelectric composite laminated beam using higher order electric field nonlinearity to assess the effect of electrostriction and elastostriction coefficient at a high electric field. A finite element approach based on higher-order shear deformation theory is applied for static analysis of composite laminated beams, varying the thickness and orientation of laminates, to verify the nonlinear effect under a high electric field. A good comparison of results is shown with the available results in the literature. The finding of the results highlights the importance of considering elastostriction term along with the electrostriction term in determining the deflection and stresses of the composite laminated beam.