Energy harvesting from moving harmonic and moving continuous mass traversing on a simply supported beam

Abstract

In this paper, energy harvesting from a simply supported beam using piezoelectric materials has been performed. Two different models for the moving objects were considered. First, the passing object was modeled as a concentrated mass with some amount of unbalances. The coupled governing equations of the beam, the piezoelectric patch, and the moving mass were obtained and discretized using assumed mode method. The beam response and the output voltage were calculated for different values of moving mass and unbalances. In the second model, the passing object was studied as a distributed mass. The governing equations of the system were extracted at three stages, namely entrance, main, and exit of the object from the beam. To validate the numerical findings, two test setups were erected, and the beam midpoint deflection and the piezoelectric power were measured experimentally. A good degree of correlation was found between numerical and measured values.