An experimentally validated contactless acoustic energy transfer model with resistive-reactive electrical loading

Abstract

This paper investigates analytical modeling and experimental validation of Ultrasonic Acoustic Energy Transfer (UAET) for low-power electricity transfer to exploit in wireless applications ranging from medical implants to underwater sensor systems. A piezoelectric receiver bar is excited by incident acoustic waves originating from a source of known strength located at a specific distance from the receiver. The receiver is a free-free piezoelectric cylinder operating in the 33- mode of piezoelectricity with a fundamental resonance frequency above the audible frequency range. In order to extract the electrical power output, the piezoelectric receiver bar is shunted to a generalized resistive-reactive circuit. The goal is to quantify the electrical power delivered to the load (connected to the receiver) in terms of the source strength. Experimental validations are presented along with parameter optimization studies. Sensitivity of the electrical power output to the excitation frequency in the neighborhood of the receiver’s underwater resonance frequency, source-to-receiver distance, and source-strength level are reported. Resistive and resistive-reactive electrical loading cases are discussed for performance enhancement and frequency-wise robustness. Simulations and experiments reveal that the presented multiphysics analytical model for UAET can be used to predict the coupled system dynamics with very good accuracy.