scholarly journals On the Effects of Structural Coupling on Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting Systems Subject to Random Base Excitation

Aerospace ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (7) ◽  
pp. 93
Author(s):  
Hamidreza Masoumi ◽  
Hamid Moeenfard ◽  
Hamed Haddad Khodaparast ◽  
Michael I. Friswell
Keyword(s):  
Energy Harvesting ◽  
Mechanical Response ◽  
Harmonic Excitation ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Analytical Models ◽  
Energy Harvesters ◽  
Piezoelectric Energy ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Band Limited ◽  
Multi Body

The current research investigates the novel approach of coupling separate energy harvesters in order to scavenge more power from a stochastic point of view. To this end, a multi-body system composed of two cantilever harvesters with two identical piezoelectric patches is considered. The beams are interconnected through a linear spring. Assuming a stochastic band limited white noise excitation of the base, the statistical properties of the mechanical response and those of the generated voltages are derived in closed form. Moreover, analytical models are derived for the expected value of the total harvested energy. In order to maximize the expected generated power, an optimization is performed to determine the optimum physical and geometrical characteristics of the system. It is observed that by properly tuning the harvester parameters, the energy harvesting performance of the structure is remarkably improved. Furthermore, using an optimized energy harvester model, this study shows that the coupling of the beams negatively affects the scavenged power, contrary to the effect previously demonstrated for harvesters under harmonic excitation. The qualitative and quantitative knowledge resulting from this analysis can be effectively employed for the realistic design and modelling of coupled multi-body structures under stochastic excitations.

Influence of Bias Angle on Output Performance of Nonlinear Asymmetric Energy Harvesters: Experimental Investigation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Wang ◽  
Junyi Cao ◽  
Ying Zhang ◽  
Chris R. Bowen
Keyword(s):  
Energy Harvesting ◽  
Power Output ◽  
Performance Enhancement ◽  
Vibrational Energy ◽  
Experimental System ◽  
Harmonic Excitation ◽  
Nonlinear Phenomena ◽  
Energy Harvesters ◽  
Output Performance ◽  
Piezoelectric Energy

In recent decades, the technique of piezoelectric energy harvesting has drawn a great deal of attention since it is a promising method to convert vibrational energy to electrical energy to supply lower-electrical power consumption devices. The most commonly used configuration for energy harvesting is the piezoelectric cantilever beam. Due to the inability of linear energy harvesting to capture broadband vibrations, most researchers have been focusing on broadband performance enhancement by introducing nonlinear phenomena into the harvesting systems. Previous studies have often focused on the symmetric potential harvesters excited in a fixed direction and the influence of the gravity of the oscillators was neglected. However, it is difficult to attain a completely symmetric energy harvester in practice. Furthermore, the gravity of the oscillator due to the change of installation angle will also exert a dramatic influence on the power output. Therefore, this paper experimentally investigates the influence of gravity due to bias angle on the output performance of asymmetric potential energy harvesters under harmonic excitation. An experimental system is developed to measure the output voltages of the harvesters at different bias angles. Experimental results show that the bias angle has little influence on the performance of linear and monostable energy harvesters. However, for an asymmetric potential bistable harvester with sensitive nonlinear restoring forces, the bias angle influences the power output greatly due to the effect of gravity. There exists an optimum bias angle range for the asymmetric potential bistable harvester to generate large output power in a broader frequency range. The reason for this phenomenon is that the influence of gravity due to bias angle will balance the nonlinear asymmetric potential function in a certain range, which could be applied to improve the power output of asymmetric bistable harvesters.

scholarly journals Experimentally Verified Analytical Models of Piezoelectric Cantilevers in Different Design Configurations

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (20) ◽  
pp. 6759
Author(s):  
Zdenek Machu ◽  
Ondrej Rubes ◽  
Oldrich Sevecek ◽  
Zdenek Hadas
Keyword(s):  
Energy Harvesting ◽  
Analytical Model ◽  
Power Output ◽  
Electrical Power ◽  
Analytical Models ◽  
Energy Harvesters ◽  
Sensing Applications ◽  
Piezoelectric Energy ◽  
Electrical Power Output ◽  
Tip Mass

This paper deals with analytical modelling of piezoelectric energy harvesting systems for generating useful electricity from ambient vibrations and comparing the usefulness of materials commonly used in designing such harvesters for energy harvesting applications. The kinetic energy harvesters have the potential to be used as an autonomous source of energy for wireless applications. Here in this paper, the considered energy harvesting device is designed as a piezoelectric cantilever beam with different piezoelectric materials in both bimorph and unimorph configurations. For both these configurations a single degree-of-freedom model of a kinematically excited cantilever with a full and partial electrode length respecting the dimensions of added tip mass is derived. The analytical model is based on Euler-Bernoulli beam theory and its output is successfully verified with available experimental results of piezoelectric energy harvesters in three different configurations. The electrical output of the derived model for the three different materials (PZT-5A, PZZN-PLZT and PVDF) and design configurations is in accordance with lab measurements which are presented in the paper. Therefore, this model can be used for predicting the amount of harvested power in a particular vibratory environment. Finally, the derived analytical model was used to compare the energy harvesting effectiveness of the three considered materials for both simple harmonic excitation and random vibrations of the corresponding harvesters. The comparison revealed that both PZT-5A and PZZN-PLZT are an excellent choice for energy harvesting purposes thanks to high electrical power output, whereas PVDF should be used only for sensing applications due to low harvested electrical power output.

Multimodal pizza-shaped piezoelectric vibration-based energy harvesters

2021 ◽  
pp. 1045389X2110069
Author(s):  
Virgilio J Caetano ◽  
Marcelo A Savi
Keyword(s):  
Energy Harvesting ◽  
Frequency Spectrum ◽  
Optimization Procedure ◽  
Single Mode ◽  
Ambient Vibration ◽  
Vibration Source ◽  
Element Analysis ◽  
Energy Harvesters ◽  
Piezoelectric Energy ◽  
Harvesting Systems

Energy harvesting from ambient vibration through piezoelectric devices has received a lot of attention in recent years from both academia and industry. One of the main challenges is to develop devices capable of adapting to diverse sources of environmental excitation, being able to efficiently operate over a broadband frequency spectrum. This work proposes a novel multimodal design of a piezoelectric energy harvesting system to harness energy from a wideband ambient vibration source. Circular-shaped and pizza-shaped designs are employed as candidates for the device, comparing their performance with classical beam-shaped devices. Finite element analysis is employed to model system dynamics using ANSYS Workbench. An optimization procedure is applied to the system aiming to seek a configuration that can extract energy from a broader frequency spectrum and maximize its output power. A comparative analysis with conventional energy harvesting systems is performed. Numerical simulations are carried out to investigate the harvester performances under harmonic and random excitations. Results show that the proposed multimodal harvester has potential to harness energy from broadband ambient vibration sources presenting performance advantages in comparison to conventional single-mode energy harvesters.

Model Reduction of Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters Subject to Band-Limited, Stochastic Base Excitation

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam M. Wickenheiser
Keyword(s):  
White Noise ◽  
Design Optimization ◽  
Broadband Noise ◽  
Degree Of Freedom ◽  
Single Degree Of Freedom ◽  
Energy Harvesters ◽  
White Noise Excitation ◽  
Single Degree ◽  
Piezoelectric Energy ◽  
Band Limited

In many scenarios where vibration energy harvesting can be utilized — particularly those involving bio-motions or environmental disturbances — energy sources are broadband and non-stationary. On the other hand, design procedures have been predominantly developed for harmonic or white noise excitation, specifically for single degree of freedom approximations of the transducer. In this paper, a general approach for design optimization of cantilevered, piezoelectric energy harvesters in the presence of band-limited, white-noise excitation is outlined. For this study, human and vehicular motions are considered; these complex waveforms are distilled into a small set of dominant features with regard to their impact on the power output of the device. Criteria based on modal participation factors, including pre-filtering of the disturbance, are used in guiding the reduction of the input and plant degrees of freedom in order to make the design optimization problem tractable. This process determines the error in assuming a low-order model for the transducer in the presence of broadband noise that may excite multiple modes of vibration. Furthermore, this study considers the quantitative impact of charge cancellation in higher modes and the benefits of inserting multiple electrodes along the length. To illustrate these methods, energy harvesters are designed for acceleration data collected from walking and car idling. It is shown that a simple method that is a generalization of naïve approaches that assume harmonic or white noise excitation and a single degree of freedom can determine which simplifications are appropriate and the inaccuracies that can be expected from them.

Geometric and Material Optimization of Vortex-Induced Vibration Micro Energy Harvesters for Localized Wind Environments

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse J. French ◽  
Colton T. Sheets
Keyword(s):  
Energy Harvesting ◽  
Power Output ◽  
Fluid Velocity ◽  
Frequency Variation ◽  
Vortex Induced Vibration ◽  
Energy Harvesters ◽  
Wind Speeds ◽  
Material Optimization ◽  
Piezoelectric Energy ◽  
Wind Velocities

Wind energy capture in today’s environment is often focused on producing large amounts of power through massive turbines operating at high wind speeds. The device presented by the authors performs on the extreme opposite scale of these large wind turbines. Utilizing vortex induced vibration combined with developed and demonstrated piezoelectric energy harvesting techniques, the device produces power consistent with peer technologies in the rapidly growing field of micro-energy harvesting. Vortex-induced vibrations in the Karman vortex street are the catalyst for energy production of the device. To optimize power output, resonant frequency of the harvester is matched to vortex shedding frequency at a given wind speed, producing a lock-on effect that results in the greatest amplitude of oscillation. The frequency of oscillation is varied by altering the effective spring constant of the device, thereby allowing for “tuning” of the device to specific wind environments. While localized wind conditions are never able to be predicted with absolute certainty, patterns can be established through thorough data collection. Sampling of local wind conditions led to the design and testing of harvesters operating within a range of wind velocities between approximately 4 mph and 25 mph. For the extremities of this range, devices were constructed with resonant frequencies of approximately 17 and 163 Hz. Frequency variation was achieved through altering the material composition and geometry of the energy harvester. Experimentation was performed on harvesters to determine power output at optimized fluid velocity, as well as above and below. Analysis was also conducted on shedding characteristics of the device over the tested range of wind velocities. Computational modeling of the device is performed and compared to experimentally produced data.

scholarly journals Theory of energy harvesting from heartbeat including the effects of pleural cavity and respiration

2017 ◽  
Vol 473 (2207) ◽  
pp. 20170615 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yangyang Zhang ◽  
Bingwei Lu ◽  
Chaofeng Lü ◽  
Xue Feng
Keyword(s):  
Energy Harvesting ◽  
Pleural Cavity ◽  
Scaling Law ◽  
Battery Life ◽  
Deformation Model ◽  
Experimental Measurements ◽  
Combined System ◽  
Energy Harvesters ◽  
Piezoelectric Energy

Self-powered implantable devices with flexible energy harvesters are of significant interest due to their potential to solve the problem of limited battery life and surgical replacement. The flexible electronic devices made of piezoelectric materials have been employed to harvest energy from the motion of biological organs. Experimental measurements show that the output voltage of the device mounted on porcine left ventricle in chest closed environment decreases significantly compared to the case of chest open. A restricted-space deformation model is proposed to predict the impeding effect of pleural cavity, surrounding tissues, as well as respiration on the efficiency of energy harvesting from heartbeat using flexible piezoelectric devices. The analytical solution is verified by comparing theoretical predictions to experimental measurements. A simple scaling law is established to analyse the intrinsic correlations between the normalized output power and the combined system parameters, i.e. the normalized permitted space and normalized electrical load. The results may provide guidelines for optimization of in vivo energy harvesting from heartbeat or the motions of other biological organs using flexible piezoelectric energy harvesters.

scholarly journals A Feasibility Study of Fabrication of Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters on Commercially Available Aluminum Foil

Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (14) ◽  
pp. 2797 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chongsei Yoon ◽  
Buil Jeon ◽  
Giwan Yoon
Keyword(s):  
Energy Harvesting ◽  
Elevated Temperatures ◽  
Aluminum Foil ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Device Fabrication ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Plastic Substrate ◽  
Device Performance ◽  
Piezoelectric Energy ◽  
Energy Harvesting Devices

In this paper, we present zinc oxide (ZnO)-based flexible harvesting devices employing commercially available, cost-effective thin aluminum (Al) foils as substrates and conductive bottom electrodes. From the device fabrication point of view, Al-foils have a relatively high melting point, allowing for device processing and annealing treatments at elevated temperatures, which flexible plastic substrate materials cannot sustain because of their relatively low melting temperatures. Moreover, Al-foil is a highly cost-effective, commercially available material. In this work, we fabricated and characterized various kinds of multilayered thin-film energy harvesting devices, employing Al-foils in order to verify their device performance. The fabricated devices exhibited peak-to-peak output voltages ranging from 0.025 V to 0.140 V. These results suggest that it is feasible to employ Al-foils to fabricate energy-efficient energy harvesting devices at relatively high temperatures. It is anticipated that with further process optimization and device integration, device performance can be further improved.

Embedded Metamaterial Subframe Patch for Increased Power Output of Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Saman Farhangdoust ◽  
Gary Georgeson ◽  
Jeong-Beom Ihn ◽  
Armin Mehrabi
Keyword(s):  
Energy Harvesting ◽  
Cantilever Beam ◽  
Renewable Energy Sources ◽  
Piezoelectric Element ◽  
Energy Harvesters ◽  
Piezoelectric Energy ◽  
Harvesting Systems ◽  
Host Structure ◽  
Self Powered ◽  
Low Efficiency

Abstract These days, piezoelectric energy harvesting (PEH) is introduced as one of the clean and renewable energy sources for powering the self-powered sensors utilized for wireless condition monitoring of structures. However, low efficiency is the biggest drawback of the PEHs. This paper introduces an innovative embedded metamaterial subframe (MetaSub) patch as a practical solution to address the low throughput limitation of conventional PEHs whose host structure has already been constructed or installed. To evaluate the performance of the embedded MetaSub patch (EMSP), a cantilever beam is considered as the host structure in this study. The EMSP transfers the auxetic behavior to the piezoelectric element (PZT) wherever substituting a regular beam with an auxetic beam is either impracticable or suboptimal. The concept of the EMSP is numerically validated, and the COMSOL Multiphysics software was employed to investigate its performance when a cantilever beam is subjected to different amplitude and frequency. The FEM results demonstrate that the harvesting power in cases that use the EMSP can be amplified up to 5.5 times compared to a piezoelectric cantilever energy harvester without patch. This paper opens up a great potential of using EMSP for different types of energy harvesting systems in biomedical, acoustics, civil, electrical, aerospace, and mechanical engineering applications.

A parametric analysis of the nonlinear dynamics of bistable vibration-based piezoelectric energy harvesters

2020 ◽  
pp. 1045389X2096318
Author(s):  
Luã Guedes Costa ◽  
Luciana Loureiro da Silva Monteiro ◽  
Pedro Manuel Calas Lopes Pacheco ◽  
Marcelo Amorim Savi
Keyword(s):  
Nonlinear Dynamics ◽  
Energy Harvesting ◽  
Parametric Analysis ◽  
Electromechanical Coupling ◽  
Performance Enhancement ◽  
Piezoelectric Materials ◽  
Electrical Power ◽  
Harmonic Excitation ◽  
Piezoelectric Energy ◽  
Harvesting Systems

Piezoelectric materials exhibit electromechanical coupling properties and have been gained importance over the last few decades due to their broad range of applications. Vibration-based energy harvesting systems have been proposed using the direct piezoelectric effect by converting mechanical into electrical energy. Although the great relevance of these systems, performance enhancement strategies are essential to improve the applicability of these system and have been studied substantially. This work addresses a numerical investigation of the influence of cubic polynomial nonlinearities in energy harvesting systems considering a bistable structure subjected to harmonic excitation. A deep parametric analysis is carried out employing nonlinear dynamics tools. Results show complex dynamical behaviors associated with the trigger of inter-well motion. Electrical power output and efficiency are monitored in order to evaluate the configurations associated with best system performances.

Piezoelectric energy harvesting from roadway deformation under various traffic flow conditions

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (15) ◽  
pp. 1751-1762
Author(s):  
Yangyang Zhang ◽  
He Zhang ◽  
Chaofeng Lü ◽  
Yisheng Chen ◽  
Ji Wang
Keyword(s):  
Energy Harvesting ◽  
Traffic Flow ◽  
Laboratory Tests ◽  
Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting ◽  
Flow Conditions ◽  
Energy Harvesters ◽  
Piezoelectric Energy ◽  
Roadway Deformation ◽  
Real Traffic

Many laboratory tests and in situ measurements have been conducted to study piezoelectric energy harvesting from roadway deformation. However, the performance of piezoelectric energy harvesters under real traffic flow conditions is still unknown. In this study, an electromechanical model of piezoelectric energy harvesters with detailed parameters (including the geometric parameters, material parameters, and circuits) is established, and the influences of traffic flow conditions (i.e. traffic speed and traffic density) on the output power of piezoelectric energy harvesters are analyzed by employing a scaling law method and traffic flow theory. The results indicate that remarkable differences exist in the load patterns and the frequencies between the laboratory tests (or in situ measurements) and real traffic flow conditions. Because of these differences, the results (especially the output electric power and optimization design methods) of previous studies may be inapplicable for piezoelectric energy harvesters embedded in roadways. Considering the distinguishing features of the traffic load pattern, the optimization criteria to determine the geometric parameters and the intrinsic system parameter of piezoelectric energy harvesters are obtained, and the corresponding optimal output power densities of the piezoelectric energy harvesters are also quantitatively calibrated. These theoretical results may serve as guidelines for optimizing the design of piezoelectric energy harvesters embedded in roadways under different traffic flow conditions.

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