Performance Evaluation of Piezoceramic Sensors for Impact Detection

This study presents a handy and low-cost method to examine the impact sensing properties of piezoceramics using a drop-weight impact approach and an IC-741 operational amplifier (OP-AMP) configured in astable mode. To illustrate, piezoelectric ceramics Ba0.06Na0.47Bi0.47TiO3 (BNBT) and Ba0.85Ca0.15Zr0.10Ti0.90O3 (BCZT) have been considered in this work. The BNBT and BCZT ceramics were prepared through the conventional solid-state reaction method, and single-phase formation was verified via X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. XRD data, processed using FullProf software, provided insights into the crystal symmetry, space group, and lattice parameters of BNBT and BCZT. The surface morphology of both ceramics was studied by employing scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Results of the impact study for both materials showed that the dielectric constant and output waveforms increased proportionally with applied mechanical energy. Such a circuit offers potential applications in flow, pressure, and impact sensing. Further, the proposed experiment provides an important educational tool for undergraduate and postgraduate students in electrical engineering, materials science, and physics, or could be taken up as a project based on available experimental resources.