Abstract
Designing a piezoelectric energy harvester (PEH) with high power density and high fatigue resistance is essential for the successful replacement of the currently using batteries in structural health monitoring (SHM) systems. Among the various designs, the PEH comprising of a cantilever structure as a passive layer and piezoelectric single crystal-based fiber composites (SFC) as an active layer showed excellent performance due to its high electromechanical properties and dynamic flexibilities that are suitable for low frequency vibrations. In the present study, an effort was made to investigate the reliable performance of hard and soft SFC based PEHs. The base acceleration of both PEHs is held at 7 m/s2 and the frequency of excitation is tuned to their resonant frequency (fr) and then the output power (Prms) is monitored for 107 fatigue cycles. The effect of fatigue cycles on the output voltage, vibration displacement, dielectric, and ferroelectric properties of PEHs was analyzed. It was noticed that fatigue-induced performance degradation is more prominent in soft SFC-based PEH (SS-PEH) than in hard SFC-based PEH (HS-PEH). The HS-PEH showed a slight degradation in the output power due to a shift in fr, however, no degradation in the maximum power was noticed, in fact, dielectric and ferroelectric properties were improved even after 107 vibration cycles. In this context, the present study provides a pathway to consider the fatigue life of piezoelectric material for the designing of PEH to be used at resonant conditions for long-term operation.
Highlights
Over the past few years, research on vibration-based energy harvesting has increased tremendously by various groups across the globe
In order to know the resonant frequency (f r ) and optimum load resistance (Ropt ) of both hard and soft single crystal-based fiber composites (SFC)-based piezoelectric energy harvester (PEH) prior to test the fatigue behavior, the energy harvesting has been performed at an optimized base acceleration (7 m/s2 ) condition (Figure S1) under different excitation conditions by varying the frequency (20 Hz–40 Hz) and load resistances (1 kΩ–1000 kΩ)
The f r values of the PEHs are identified from the maximum Prms values, which are found to be 35.2 Hz and 33.5 Hz for
Summary
Over the past few years, research on vibration-based energy harvesting has increased tremendously by various groups across the globe. Among the various PEH configurations that have been examined for the efficient low frequency vibration energy scavenging, the cantilever based PEH is exceptional due to its simple structure and high root strain levels, which usually operates in bending mode to induce the in-plane strain in the cantilever structure according to the Euler-Bernoulli equation [1,4]. Numerous efforts have been made to improve the energy harvesting performance by optimizing the PEH configuration utilizing the materials with various strengths, dimensions, and strain levels [5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19]. A prior knowledge of behavior of the integral components under various excitation conditions is essential for designing high performance devices and for selecting the suitable materials to be used in specific applications
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