Abstract
This paper studies the design scalability of a Γ-shaped piezoelectric energy harvester (ΓEH) using the generalized classical Ritz method (GCRM) and differential evolution algorithm. The generalized classical Ritz method (GCRM) is the advanced version of the classical Ritz method (CRM) that can handle a multibody system by assembling its equations of motion interconnected by the constraint equations. In this study, the GCRM is extended for analysis of the piezoelectric energy harvesters with material and/or orientation discontinuity between members. The electromechanical equations of motion are derived for the PE harvester using GCRM, and the accuracy of the numerical simulation is experimentally validated by comparing frequency response functions for voltage and power output. Then the GCRM is used in the power maximization design study that considers four different total masses—15 g, 30 g, 45 g, 60 g—to understand design scalability. The optimized ΓEH has the maximum normalized power density of 23.1 × 103 kg·s·m−3 which is the highest among the reviewed PE harvesters. We discuss how the design parameters need to be determined at different harvester scales.
Highlights
This study extends the use of generalized classical Ritz method (GCRM) for electromechanical linear piezoelectric energy (PE) harvesters with general geometry, by including the piezoelectric constitutive relations
All four optimized Γ-shaped piezoelectric energy harvester (ΓEH) in this study show higher normalized power density (NPD) (15.49 × 103 ~23.10 × 103 kg·s·m−3 ) than those of any other PE harvesters reviewed in this table (0.016 × 103 ~11.55 × 103 kg·s·m−3 )
The accuracy of the proposed Generalized CRM for Piezoelectric Harvester (GCRM-P) model used for the frequency response analysis of the ΓEH was experimentally validated with the error 5.5% for the peak power frequency
Summary
Piezoelectricity is one of the energy conversion principles used in energy harvesting systems, and it has shown advantages such as a high voltage output and ease of fabrication both in macro- and microscales [1,2,3]. These advantages have led to the use of piezoelectricity in various energy harvesting applications, and their design studies—structural modifications and electric circuit designs—have been actively conducted during the last two decades [4,5]. The aforementioned works developed numerical models for PE harvesters and performed design studies to reduce the development cost while satisfying the power requirement
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