Non-linear piezoelectric vibration energy harvesting from a vertical cantilever beam with tip mass

2012 ◽  
Vol 23 (13) ◽  
pp. 1505-1521 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael I Friswell ◽  
S Faruque Ali ◽  
Onur Bilgen ◽  
Sondipon Adhikari ◽  
Arthur W Lees ◽  
...  

A common energy harvesting device uses a piezoelectric patch on a cantilever beam with a tip mass. The usual configuration exploits the linear resonance of the system; this works well for harmonic excitation and when the natural frequency is accurately tuned to the excitation frequency. A new configuration is proposed, consisting of a cantilever beam with a tip mass that is mounted vertically and excited in the transverse direction at its base. This device is highly non-linear with two potential wells for large tip masses, when the beam is buckled. The system dynamics may include multiple solutions and jumps between the potential wells, and these are exploited in the harvesting device. The electromechanical equations of motion for this system are developed, and its response for a range of parameters is investigated using phase portraits and bifurcation diagrams. The model is validated using an experimental device with three different tip masses, representing three interesting cases: a linear system; a low natural frequency, non-buckled beam; and a buckled beam. The most practical configuration seems to be the pre-buckled case, where the proposed system has a low natural frequency, a high level of harvested power and an increased bandwidth over a linear harvester.

Author(s):  
Onur Bilgen ◽  
S. Faruque Ali ◽  
Michael I. Friswell ◽  
Grzegorz Litak ◽  
Marc de Angelis

An inverted cantilevered beam vibration energy harvester with a tip mass is evaluated for its electromechanical efficiency and power output capacity in the presence of pure harmonic, pure random and various combinations of harmonic and random base excitation cases. The energy harvester employs a composite piezoelectric material device that is bonded near the root of the beam. The tip mass is used to introduce non-linearity to the system by inducing buckling in some configurations and avoiding it in others. The system dynamics include multiple solutions and jumps between the potential wells, and these are exploited in the harvesting device. This configuration exploits the non-linear properties of the system using base excitation in conjunction with the tip mass at the end of the beam. Such nonlinear device has the potential to work well when the input excitation does not have a dominant harmonic component at a fixed frequency. The paper presents an extensive experimental analysis, results and interesting conclusions derived directly from the experiments supported by numerical simulations.


Author(s):  
Brennan E. Yamamoto ◽  
A. Zachary Trimble

As the required power for wireless, low-power sensor systems continues to decrease, the feasibility of a fully self-sustaining, onboard power supply, has increased interest in the field of vibration energy harvesting — where ambient kinetic energy is scavenged from the surrounding environment. Current literature has produced a number of harvesting techniques and transduction methods; however, they are all fundamentally similar in that, the harmonic excitation frequency must fall within the resonant bandwidth frequency of the harvesting mechanism to maintain acceptable energy output. The purpose of this research is to investigate the potential for natural frequency tuning by means of passive electrical components, that is, using an imposed electrical inductance to adjust the equivalent stiffness, and resulting resonant frequency of a vibration energy harvester. In past literature, it was concluded that an “active” frequency tuning mechanism would be infeasible, as the power required by an equivalent “stiffening transducer” would require more power to maintain the system at resonance, than the system would actually produce as a result of maintaining resonance, i.e., a net energy loss (Roundy and Zhang 2005). It is believed that the model used in this conclusion can be improved by directly modeling changes in system stiffness as an equivalent mechanical spring, instead of an external inertial loading. Due to the conservative nature of the harmonic spring, the compliance of a harvesting mechanism can be theoretically altered without energy losses, whether the actuation is applied using “active” or “passive” means. This revised model departs from the traditional, base excitation model in most vibration energy harvesting systems, and includes additional stiffness, and damping elements, representative of induced mechanical spring, and related losses. We can validate the feasibility of this technique, if it can be shown that the natural frequency of an energy harvester can be altered, and still maintain energy output similar to its “untuned” natural frequency. If feasible, this tuning method would provide a viable alternative to other bandwidth-increasing techniques in literature, e.g., wideband harvesting, bandwidth normalizing, high-damping, etc. In this research, a change in natural frequency of the experimental energy harvesting system of 0.5 Hz was demonstrated, indicating that adjusting the natural frequency of a vibration energy harvesting system is possible; however, there are many new challenges associated with the revised energy harvesting model, related to the new introduced losses to the system, as well as impedance matching between the mechanical and electrical domains. Further research is required to better quantitatively characterize the relationship between natural frequency shift, and imposed electrical inductance.


Author(s):  
Xiaomin Xue ◽  
Jiangwu Zhou ◽  
Qing Sun ◽  
Dong Luo

Abstract Piezoelectric transduction has received great attention for vibration-to-electric energy conversion in the last ten years. A typical PZT harvester is a cantilever subject due to its easy implementation. It has been investigated in regard to its harvesting capacity under various conditions. However, its electro-mechanical properties hasn’t gotten involved enough, which is in fact crucial for comprehending the intrinsic properties. Given that, this paper set out to explore the electro-mechanical characteristics of a cantilever beam from a laminated PZT patch by means of experiment and modeling studies. In the test, the PZT cantilever is magnetize by a tip mass, then connected into a circuit with a resistor and vibrated by an exciter. Through tuning excitation frequency, mass weight and resistances load, an optimal settings are summarized for obtaining more harvested energy in the system. Besides, the electro-mechanical behavior is investigated that demonstrates nonlinear hysteretic. On the basis, electromechanical model is presented to accurately mimic the aforementioned nonlinear behavior of the PZT harvester. The presented study has revealed that a proper choice of harvesting system with an accurate model can further exploit energy potentiality in piezoelectric material so as to apply its energy harvesting capability into much more extensive engineering fields.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 3868
Author(s):  
Qiong Wu ◽  
Hairui Zhang ◽  
Jie Lian ◽  
Wei Zhao ◽  
Shijie Zhou ◽  
...  

The energy harvested from the renewable energy has been attracting a great potential as a source of electricity for many years; however, several challenges still exist limiting output performance, such as the package and low frequency of the wave. Here, this paper proposed a bistable vibration system for harvesting low-frequency renewable energy, the bistable vibration model consisting of an inverted cantilever beam with a mass block at the tip in a random wave environment and also develop a vibration energy harvesting system with a piezoelectric element attached to the surface of a cantilever beam. The experiment was carried out by simulating the random wave environment using the experimental equipment. The experiment result showed a mass block’s response vibration was indeed changed from a single stable vibration to a bistable oscillation when a random wave signal and a periodic signal were co-excited. It was shown that stochastic resonance phenomena can be activated reliably using the proposed bistable motion system, and, correspondingly, large-scale bistable responses can be generated to realize effective amplitude enlargement after input signals are received. Furthermore, as an important design factor, the influence of periodic excitation signals on the large-scale bistable motion activity was carefully discussed, and a solid foundation was laid for further practical energy harvesting applications.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (13) ◽  
pp. 3926
Author(s):  
Joanna Iwaniec ◽  
Grzegorz Litak ◽  
Marek Iwaniec ◽  
Jerzy Margielewicz ◽  
Damian Gąska ◽  
...  

In this paper, the frequency broadband effect in vibration energy harvesting was studied numerically using a quasi-zero stiffness resonator with two potential wells and piezoelectric transducers. Corresponding solutions were investigated for system excitation harmonics at various frequencies. Solutions for the higher voltage output were collected in specific branches of the power output diagram. Both the resonant solution synchronized with excitation and the frequency responses of the subharmonic spectra were found. The selected cases were illustrated and classified using a phase portrait, a Poincaré section, and recurrence plot (RP) approaches. Select recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) measures were used to characterize the discussed solutions.


Author(s):  
Saman Farhangdoust ◽  
Claudia Mederos ◽  
Behrouz Farkiani ◽  
Armin Mehrabi ◽  
Hossein Taheri ◽  
...  

Abstract This paper presents a creative energy harvesting system using a bimorph piezoelectric cantilever-beam to power wireless sensors in an IoT network for the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. The bimorph piezoelectric energy harvester (BPEH) comprises a cantilever beam as a substrate sandwiched between two piezoelectric layers to remarkably harness ambient vibrations of an inclined stay cable and convert them into electrical energy when the cable is subjected to a harmonic acceleration. To investigate and design the bridge energy harvesting system, a field measurement was required for collecting cable vibration data. The results of a non-contact laser vibrometer is used to remotely measure the dynamic characteristics of the inclined cables. A finite element study is employed to simulate a 3-D model of the proposed BPEH by COMSOL Multiphasics. The FE modelling results showed that the average power generated by the BPEH excited by a harmonic acceleration of 1 m/s2 at 1 Hz is up to 614 μW which satisfies the minimum electric power required for the sensor node in the proposed IoT network. In this research a LoRaWAN architecture is also developed to utilize the BPEH as a sustainable and sufficient power resource for an IoT platform which uses wireless sensor networks installed on the bridge stay cables to collect and remotely transfer bridge health monitoring data over the bridge in a low-power manner.


2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 625-632 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yonas Tadesse ◽  
Shujun Zhang ◽  
Shashank Priya

In this study, we report a multimodal energy harvesting device that combines electromagnetic and piezoelectric energy harvesting mechanism. The device consists of piezoelectric crystals bonded to a cantilever beam. The tip of the cantilever beam has an attached permanent magnet which, oscillates within a stationary coil fixed to the top of the package. The permanent magnet serves two purpose (i) acts as a tip mass for the cantilever beam and lowers the resonance frequency, and (ii) acts as a core which oscillates between the inductive coils resulting in electric current generation through Faraday's effect. Thus, this design combines the energy harvesting from two different mechanisms, piezoelectric and electromagnetic, on the same platform. The prototype system was optimized using the finite element software, ANSYS, to find the resonance frequency and stress distribution. The power generated from the fabricated prototype was found to be 0.25 W using the electromagnetic mechanism and 0.25 mW using the piezoelectric mechanism at 35 g acceleration and 20 Hz frequency.


Energy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 180 ◽  
pp. 737-750 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yi Li ◽  
Shengxi Zhou ◽  
Zhichun Yang ◽  
Tong Guo ◽  
Xutao Mei

Author(s):  
Wenlung Li ◽  
S. P. Tseng

The main objective of the report is to present a new identification method has been derived for single-degree, base-excited systems. The system is actually to mimic a probe of cantilever type of AFMs. In fact, the idea of the present report was initiated by needs for in situ spring constant calibration for such probe systems. Calibration processes can be treated as parameter identification for the stiffness of the probe before it is used. However, sine a real probe is too small to be seen by bare eyes and too costly to verify, a cantilever beam was adopted to replace it during the study. The present method starts with giving a chirp excitation to the target system, and to lock the damped natural frequency. Once the damped natural frequency is obtained, it is possible to locate the frequency at which the phase lag is equal to π/2. From which, the excitation frequency is then purposely changed to that frequency and the corresponding steady-state responses are measured. In the meantime, the system dissipative energy or power may also need to be stored. In fact, the present identification formulation is to express the spring constant of the target systems in terms of two measurable parameters: the phase angle and the system damping. The former can be computed from the damped natural frequency while the latter can be identified along with measuring the input power. The novel formulation is then numerically simulated using the Simulink toolbox of MATLAB. The simulation results clearly showed the current identification method can work with good accuracy. Following the numerical simulation, experimental measurements were also carried out by a cantilever beam that its free end was immersed to viscid fluids. The fluids of different viscosity were used to mimic the environments of a probe in use. The experimental results again substantiated the correctness of the present method. Thus it is accordingly concluded that the new recognition algorithm can be applied with confidence.


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