Abstract
An electromechanical model for beam-like piezoelectric energy harvesters based on Reissner’s beam theory is developed in this paper. The proposed model captures first-order shear deformation and large displacement/rotation, which distinguishes this model from other models reported in the literature. All governing equations are presented in detail, making the associated framework extensible to investigate various piezoelectric energy harvesters. The weak formulation is then derived to obtain the approximate solution to the governing equations by the finite element method. This solution scheme is completely coupled, and thus allows for two-way interaction between mechanical and electrical fields. To validate this model, extensive numerical examples are implemented in the linear and nonlinear regime. In the linear limit, this model produces results in excellent agreement with reference data. In the nonlinear regime, the large amplitude response of the piezoelectric beam induced by strong base excitation or fluid flow is considered, and the comparison of results with literature data is encouraging. The ability of this nonlinear model to predict limit cycle oscillations in axial flow is demonstrated.
Highlights
The growing demand for small-sized and low-power electronic devices has led to a focused research effort on the technology of energy harvesting, by which a permanent and autonomous power generator is possible due to the extraction of a usable form of energy from ambient energy sources
This paper presents a nonlinear model of piezoelectric energy harvesters (PEHs) based on the geometrically exact beam theory [24]
This inconsistency is inconsequential in small deformation settings, and may not matter even in some large deformation cases, which can be inferred from [8,22], where this inconsistency is ignored in the theoretical model but good agreement with the experimental results is still achieved by the theoretical prediction results
Summary
The growing demand for small-sized and low-power electronic devices has led to a focused research effort on the technology of energy harvesting, by which a permanent and autonomous power generator is possible due to the extraction of a usable form of energy from ambient energy sources. The unique contribution of this investigation consists in the solution: The steady-state Green’s function method and Laplace transform method are firstly used to obtain the closed-form solution to the electromechanical PEH model All these models are geometrically linear and only feasible in small deformation regimes. When it comes to large deformation regimes, for instance, harvesting energy from LCOs, as mentioned above, geometrical nonlinearity of the structure must be taken into account. This model incorporates first-order shear deformation and allows for large displacement/rotation These two benefits are validated in the linear regime and the nonlinear regime, respectively
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