Energy harvesting efficiency of unimorph piezoelectric acoustic black hole cantilever shunted by resistive and inductive circuits

Abstract

A unimorph piezoelectric cantilever equipped with an Acoustic Black Hole (ABH) termination is designed for broadband energy harvesting. The ABH termination, with its tapered region, induces a focusing of the flexural vibrations which can be used to increase the efficiency of an energy harvesting device. A modal-based analytical model is presented, providing an explicit form of the electro-mechanical coupling for each beam eigenmode. Closed-form expressions for the coupled mechanical response and electrical outputs are obtained, allowing one to draw out a complete parametric study to optimize the device. The optimization procedure is conducted following two steps: first, optimal location and dimensions of a single piezoelectric patch are achieved by maximizing the modal electro-mechanical coupling factor (MEMCF) for each structural mode. Thanks to the proposed analytical approach, it is clearly shown that by putting the piezoelectric patch at the maximum of the strain field in the tapered termination, and by adjusting its length in accordance with the focalization created by the ABH effect, the ABH cantilever produces much higher MEMCFs over a wide frequency range and thus outperforms those of a uniform beam. Second, optimization of the shunted circuit is comprehensively performed for a circuit with only resistance, or both resistance and inductance, in series or in parallel. Analytical results show that the key design rule resides in matching the time scale of the circuit with that of the forcing frequency. Addition of the inductance allows enhancing the performance, but on a narrow frequency band. Finally, broadband advantages can be further obtained by considering multiple piezoelectric patches, in which the optimum is obtained when the shunted circuit in each patch is tuned targeting an eigenmode of the ABH beam.