engleski

Coupled Electromechanical Numerical Modelling of Piezoelectric Vibration Energy Harvesters

Energy harvesting is the process of collecting low-level ambient energy and converting it into electrical energy to be used for powering miniaturized autonomous devices, sensor networks, wearable electronics or Internet-of-Things components. The use of the pervasive kinetic energy, converted into electrical energy, is of special interest in this frame. The possibility to use bimorph piezoelectric cantilevers to convert ambient vibrations to electrical energy is therefore thoroughly analyzed in this work. A reliable modelling tool for optimizing the design of the miniature harvesters to be used in a broad frequency range, while maximizing the obtained powers, is hence needed. The problem complexity is induced by the necessity to simulate the dynamic response of the considered harvesting devices via a coupled electromechanical model. The recently developed comprehensive coupled analytical model based on distributed parameters is thus used as a benchmark to verify and tune suitable finite element (FE) numerical models. Modal (allowing to determine the mechanical dynamic response and the respective eigenfrequencies), harmonic (resulting in coupled frequency response functions) as well as linear and nonlinear transient FE analyses (resulting in dynamic responses under forced excitation at discrete time steps, including geometric nonlinearities) are therefore performed and complex dynamics effects are observed.

energy harvesting ; piezoelectric bimorph cantilevers ; coupled analysis ; design ; frequency bandwidth ; wearable technology

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