Application of Bare Piezoelectric Ceramics in Monitoring Resin Transfer Moulding (RTM) Process

This paper investigates application of piezoelectric ceramics mounted on surface of mould to monitor flow front and curing phases of resin in Resin Transfer Moulding (RTM) process. The piezoelectric ceramic is used for both generating ultrasound and measuring energy of echoed ultrasonic wave at the interface of mould and resin. One of the advantages of this method is that the piezoelectric ceramic can be integrated with electronic circuits in one package, including pulser, signal conditioning, data processing and communication circuits, to make a miniaturized smart sensor. A cost-effective monitoring system can be built by employing the integrated sensors. An experimental system comprising pulse generation circuitry for driving piezoelectric ceramic and ultrasonic energy measurement circuitry has been built and used in proof of concept experiments. Results of the experiments show effectiveness of bare piezoelectric ceramics in monitoring flow front of resin and curing phases of resin during an RTM process.