Sensing Sound with Electrospun Piezo Materials on a 3D-Printed Structure

The acoustic sensing capability of a nonwoven textile made of piezoelectric nanofibers electrospun on a 3D-printed cellular structure is investigated in this chapter. The nonwoven textile is made of a complex aggregation of piezoelectric nanofibers that form a porous material. The electro-mechanical response of the textile, once exposed to a sound source, is monitored through metallic electrodes that, in a sandwich configuration, let the nonwoven textile be directly exposed to sound. The functionality of this unique acoustic sensor was then validated by comparing the sensor’s response and the response of a commercial microphone when subjected to a 3-minute sweep sound from 10 Hz to 10KHz, with the sound source placed at 3 cm. The preliminary results confirmed the capability of this textile to greatly monitor acoustic waves, with the highest performance between 600 and 900 Hz. Such a frequency range makes these devices interesting to be used for micro-damage detection via ultra-light acoustic monitoring.