Abstract
Carbon fibre composite is a strong and a lightweight structural material with applications in automotive, aerospace, medical and industrial applications. The integration of piezoelectric transducer films onto the composite stack can add vibration energy harvesting capabilities to enable net-zero-power autonomous sensing for an otherwise purely mechanical structure. A PZT macro-fibre composite is co-cured with a carbon/epoxy pre-preg in order to manufacture the multi-functional composite plate. Without noticeably increasing profile, adding weight or compromising mechanical integrity, the resultant mechanical plate can recover power from vibrational excitations. With a volume of 13.5 cm3, a peak average power of 9.25 mW was recorded at 2.66 ms−2. The normalised power density of 97 µW cm−3 m−2 s4 is comparable to some of the state-of-the-art PZT generators reported in the literature.
Highlights
Fibre composite is desirable as as a lightweight and strong structural material
The integrated macro-fibre composite (MFC)-on-carbon composite plate was characterised using the test setup shown in figure 4
Given a total volume of 13.5 cm 3, the power density normalised against acceleration squared is 97 μW cm −3 m −2 s 4, which compares favourably against some of the state-of-the-art in the literature, such as a thinned bulk PZT harvester at 105 μW cm −3 m −2 s 4 [2]
Summary
Fibre composite is desirable as as a lightweight and strong structural material. Apart from its mechanical advantages, in recent years, there is a growing interest to realise multifunctional composite in order to infuse smart electronic capabilities onto the otherwise purely mechanical material. The seamless integration of piezoelectric macro-fibre composite (MFC) onto carbon fibre enables the addition of energy generation and sensing functionalities to an otherwise purely mechanical structure, without the need for extra wire tethering or altering the structural profile. MFC is manufactured from spun PZT fibres and it has demonstrated promising power performance as an energy harvester [1]. This work builds upon previous work on integrated MFC with carbon fibre reinforced polymer [4] in order embed energy harvesting capability onto the mechanical structure. A co-curing process is developed and employed in the present work to minimise any potential impact to the mechanical properties of the composite plate
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