engleski

Modelling, optimization and application of piezoelectric vibration energy harvesting devices

Energy harvesting is the process of collecting low-level ambient energy and converting it into electrical energy used to power miniaturised autonomous devices, sensor networks, wearable electronics or components of the rapidly evolving Internet-of-Things. The considered ambient energy sources comprise solar/light energy, waste heat, kinetic energy and radio-frequency. Especially interesting is the use of the pervasive (vehicles and machine tools, human or animal motion, wave energy or wind and river flows) kinetic energy that can be converted into electrical energy via the electromagnetic effect, the electrostatic principle or the electromechanical coupling of piezoelectric devices. The latter proves to be advantageous due to design simplicity, miniaturization and integration potential and high energy density. This work focuses on analysing the possibility to use vibration energy, converted via the piezoelectric effect, as a viable power source. Devices often used in this frame are bimorph piezoelectric cantilevers. The main goal in designing such devices is achieving the maximum powers for the given excitation conditions in a given volume. The problem complexity is induced by the necessity to model the response of the device via the recently developed coupled modal electromechanical distributed parameter model and/or the inherently complex nonlinear numeric analysis comprising the modal, the harmonic (including electromechanical coupling) and the transient (comprising geometrical nonlinearities) models. Once the models are implemented and experimentally verified, they can be used to optimise the design of piezoelectric harvesting devices in terms of the achieved powers as well as their suitability to be used is broader frequency bandwidths. The goals of this work is to give an overview of the potentials of energy harvesting principles, to illustrate the modelling approaches to be applied to piezoelectric vibration harvesters with the implicit aim to optimise their performances and to illustrate the possible use of optimised piezoelectric harvesters in advanced and innovative applications.

energy harvesting ; piezoelectric bimorph cantilevers ; modelling ; validation ; optimization ; application

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