On the energy harvesting via doubly curved piezoelectric panels

Abstract

This article presents an analytical solution for power output from a doubly curved piezoelectric energy harvester. The energy harvester is made of an elastic core layer coupled with one or two surface-bonded piezoelectric layers. Five mechanical equations of motion together with Gauss’s equation are derived on the basis of first-order shell theory and solved simultaneously for simply supported mechanical boundary conditions. The influence of structural damping is taken into account using Rayleigh damping. The electromechanical frequency response functions that relate the power output and circuit load resistance are identified from the exact solutions. Finally, the performance of the system is analyzed extensively for different parameters such as type of energy harvester including unimorph and bimorph panel in series or parallel connections of piezoelectric layers, circuit load resistance, geometrical parameters, and material properties of core and piezoelectric layers.