ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the piezoelectric effect and discusses the properties of selected piezoelectric transducer materials. The chapter then presents voltage sensors that employ piezoelectric transducers, in particular, from quartz and lead zirconate titanate ceramics (PZT), and fiber interferometers, fiber Bragg gratings, or displacement sensors for measuring the period transducer deformation by an applied alternating voltage. In particular, the chapter presents quartz-based 170-kV and 420-kV voltage sensors with a dual-mode sensing fiber interrogated by low-coherence interferometry. The PZT-based sensors typically down-step the line voltage with a capacitive divider and apply a fractional voltage to a stack of PZT elements interrogated by a fiber grating.
