Abstract
The performance of cantilever-beam piezoelectric energy harvester is usually analyzed with pure resistive circuit. The optimal performance of such a vibration-based energy harvesting system is limited by narrow bandwidth around its modified natural frequency. For broadband piezoelectric energy harvesting, series and parallel inductive-resistive circuits are introduced. The electromechanical coupled distributed parameter models for such systems under harmonic base excitations are decoupled with modified natural frequency and electrical damping to consider the coupling effect. Analytical solutions of the harvested power and tip displacement for the electromechanical decoupled model are confirmed with numerical solutions for the coupled model. The optimal performance of piezoelectric energy harvesting with inductive-resistive circuits is revealed theoretically as constant maximal power at any excitation frequency. This is achieved by the scenarios of matching the modified natural frequency with the excitation frequency and equating the electrical damping to the mechanical damping. The inductance and load resistance should be simultaneously tuned to their optimal values, which may not be applicable for very high electromechanical coupling systems when the excitation frequency is higher than their natural frequencies. With identical optimal performance, the series inductive-resistive circuit is recommended for relatively small load resistance, while the parallel inductive-resistive circuit is suggested for relatively large load resistance. This study provides a simplified optimization method for broadband piezoelectric energy harvesters with inductive-resistive circuits.
Highlights
INTRODUCTIONPiezoelectric energy harvesting is one of the efficient energy recovery technologies, which transforms unused vibrational energy in ambient environment to electrical energy for self-powered devices, such as micro-electro-mechanical systems, wireless sensor networks, embedded structural monitors and implanted medical devices.[1,2,3,4,5] As an alternative of conventional electrochemical battery, it reduces maintaining costs and benefits miniaturizations of electric devices.[6,7]
Piezoelectric energy harvesting is one of the efficient energy recovery technologies, which transforms unused vibrational energy in ambient environment to electrical energy for self-powered devices, such as micro-electro-mechanical systems, wireless sensor networks, embedded structural monitors and implanted medical devices.[1,2,3,4,5] As an alternative of conventional electrochemical battery, it reduces maintaining costs and benefits miniaturizations of electric devices.[6,7]The optimal performance of the piezoelectric energy harvester with pure resistor under base excitation is accompanied with narrow frequency band
The electromechanical coupled distributed parameter model is decoupled for the cantilever-beam piezoelectric energy harvester with series and parallel inductive-resistive circuits under harmonic base excitation
Summary
Piezoelectric energy harvesting is one of the efficient energy recovery technologies, which transforms unused vibrational energy in ambient environment to electrical energy for self-powered devices, such as micro-electro-mechanical systems, wireless sensor networks, embedded structural monitors and implanted medical devices.[1,2,3,4,5] As an alternative of conventional electrochemical battery, it reduces maintaining costs and benefits miniaturizations of electric devices.[6,7]. Using Karush-Kuhn-Tucker optimization technique, the effects of the inductance on improving the harvested power and expanding the bandwidth of the piezoelectric vibration-based energy harvester were studied with a one dimensional model.[15] Gradient optimization method was later utilized to design similar broadband energy harvesters with a lumped-parameter model.[16] Coupled frequency and damping were investigated by linear comprehensive analysis. Different from using such numerical method, electromechanical decoupling method was employed to derive algebraic expressions of the modified natural frequency and damping for pure resistor systems[17] and inductor-resistor systems.[18]. Such energy harvesting systems with different electromechanical coupling levels are discussed
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