Active Composites with Integrated Piezoceramics

The rapid development of industrial products in the fields of traffic technology, printing, textile machines, mechanical engineering, etc. requires higher efficiency of materials and structures. Thus, lightweight design has become very important, mainly for effects of accelerated mass. New materials like high-performance fiber composites not only find application in aerospace technology, but are also gaining importance areas. Carbon fibers, embedded in polymer matrix systems, offer much more possibilities than the usual materials like steel, titan, aluminium because of their excellent properties of weight, stability, stiffness, as well their designable material anisotropy. Nevertheless, lightweight design with fiber composites also has problems, for example vibrational sensitivity due to low mass, tendency to buckling, and susceptibility to damage. With adaptive techniques these lightweight structures can be optimized by integrating multifunctional materials such as piezoelectrics, SMA, etc. To handle multifunctional material in different applications statements regarding the compatibility, the degree of efficiency and the overall electromechanical behavior of material are important. In this paper the advantages of fiber composite technology and integration of adaptive elements shall by showing selected examples. Some basic design that were developed at the Institute of Structural Mechanics of the DLR Braunschweig are presented