scholarly journals Power Harvesting Capabilities of SHM Ultrasonic Sensors

2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christophe Delebarre ◽  
Thomas Sainthuile ◽  
Sébastien Grondel ◽  
Christophe Paget

The aim of this work is to show that classical Structural Health Monitoring ultrasonic sensors may provide some power harvesting capabilities from a wide variety of vibration sources. In other words, the authors developed an integrated piezoelectric energy harvesting sensor capable of operating a dual mode, that is, carrying out vibration power harvesting and Structural Health Monitoring. First, vibrations signals of an A380 aircraft recorded during different phases of flight are presented to show the need of a wideband piezoelectric energy harvester. Then, the voltage response of a piezoelectric power harvester bonded onto an aluminium cantilever plate and excited by an electromechanical shaker is measured. A finite element model of the energy harvester system is also presented. This model provides the voltage response of the harvester due to a mechanical excitation of the host structure and allows a better understanding of the energy harvesting process. In many cases, a good agreement with the experimental results is obtained. A power measurement also showed the ability of piezoelectric SHM sensors to harvest power over an extended frequency range present in spectra collected in aircrafts. This result could lead to numerous applications even though this kind of power harvester sensor has been initially designed to operate onboard aircrafts.

Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (11) ◽  
pp. 2572 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul C. Fitzgerald ◽  
Abdollah Malekjafarian ◽  
Basuraj Bhowmik ◽  
Luke J. Prendergast ◽  
Paul Cahill ◽  
...  

A vibration-based bridge scour detection procedure using a cantilever-based piezoelectric energy harvesting device (EHD) is proposed here. This has an advantage over an accelerometer-based method in that potentially, the requirement for a power source can be negated with the only power requirement being the storage and/or transmission of the data. Ideally, this source of power could be fulfilled by the EHD itself, although much research is currently being done to explore this. The open-circuit EHD voltage is used here to detect bridge frequency shifts arising due to scour. Using one EHD attached to the central bridge pier, both scour at the pier of installation and scour at another bridge pier can be detected from the EHD voltage generated during the bridge free-vibration stage, while the harvester is attached to a healthy pier. The method would work best with an initial modal analysis of the bridge structure in order to identify frequencies that may be sensitive to scour. Frequency components corresponding to harmonic loading and electrical interference arising from experiments are removed using the filter bank property of singular spectrum analysis (SSA). These frequencies can then be monitored by using harvested voltage from the energy harvesting device and successfully utilised towards structural health monitoring of a model bridge affected by scour.


2009 ◽  
Vol 413-414 ◽  
pp. 439-446 ◽  
Author(s):  
C.A. Featherston ◽  
Karen M. Holford ◽  
Bea Greaves

The concept of harvesting energy is not a new one: there has been an interest in this area for around 10 years. Devices typically use either vibration (rigid body motion) or thermal gradients and can harvest sufficient energy to power telemetry, small devices or to charge a battery or capacitance device. However, for the new generation of aircraft, (both fixed wing and rotating) there is now an urgent need to develop energy harvesting systems in order to provide localised power for sensors in structural health monitoring systems (SHM). By implementing SHM, aircraft manufacturers can benefit from improved safety, reduced maintenance and extended aircraft life. The work presented examines the feasibility of designing an energy harvesting system powered by the vibrations of aircraft panels generated in flight. PZT (lead zirconate titanate) harvesters are bonded to an aluminium alloy panel, representative of an aircraft wing panel which is vibrated across a range of amplitudes (up to + 0.2mm) and frequencies (up to 300Hz). By recording voltage and current outputs from each harvester, generated power is calculated which when normalised for area and mass indicates values of up to 7.0 Wm-2 and 2.5Wkg-1 respectively, representing mechanical to electrical energy conversion efficiencies of up to 35% dependant on frequency of vibration. From these values it is estimated that a harvester area of down to 71cm2 or mass of as little as 20g is necessary to meet the current minimum power requirements of SHM systems of 50mW. With predicted reductions in sensor power consumption indicating system power requirements in the order of 0.1-1mW, this work shows that piezoelectric energy harvesting has future potential for powering aerospace SHM systems.


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