- 1 - Structural Health monitoring of Ribbon Reinforced Composite Laminate using Piezoelectric Sensory Layer Arvind Kumar Jaiswal, Anand Kumar and Bishakh Bhattacharya * Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT-Kanpur, Kanpur 208016 Abstract: The ribbon reinforced composites are widely used in prosthetics – for example, in the field of orthodontics where canine to canine retention is carried out with the help of resin composite retainers reinforced with Polyethylene/Kevlar ribbons. These structures typically work like a bridge between the canines. They are subjected to central loading as well as support yielding due to unequal movement of the of the end supports. However, due to the high strain in the laminate, the chances of delamination and laminate failures are quite high in such structures. The present work has proposed a high precision piezoelectric finite element which can be used with a piezoelectric sensory network to identify a damage signal and help in early replacement of the bridge. In order to identify the damage the voltage profile and mechanical impedance are obtained for healthy and damaged laminate which can be used as a data-base for fault detection. * For Correspondence: Dr. Bishakh Bhattacharya, Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT-Kanpur, Kanpur 208016, India e-mail: bishakh@iitk.ac.in, Tel: +91-512-259-7824 (O) Fax: +91-512-259-7408