We explore a phononic crystal Luneburg lens through design, fabrication, and analysis for omnidirectional elastic wave focusing and enhanced energy harvesting both numerically and experimentally. The proposed lens is formed using hexagonal unit cells with blind holes of different diameters, which are determined according to the Luneburg lens refractive index distribution obtained by finite-element simulations of the lowest asymmetric mode Lamb wave band structure. Wave simulations are performed numerically under plane wave excitation from a line source, and focusing is observed at the opposite border of the lens with respect to the incident wave direction. Numerically simulated elastic wave focusing results are validated through a set of experiments. Omnidirectionality is demonstrated by testing the lens under plane wave excitation for different angles of incidence. With piezoelectric energy harvesters located at the boundary of the phononic crystal Luneburg lens, more than an order of magnitude larger power output can be extracted as compared to the baseline case of energy harvesting without the lens under the same plane wave excitation.
We explore the enhancement of structure-borne elastic wave energy harvesting, both numerically and experimentally, by exploiting a Gradient-Index Phononic Crystal Lens (GRIN-PCL) structure. The proposed GRIN-PCL is formed by an array of blind holes with different diameters on an aluminum plate, where the blind hole distribution is tailored to obtain a hyperbolic secant gradient profile of refractive index guided by finite-element simulations of the lowest asymmetric mode Lamb wave band diagrams. Under plane wave excitation from a line source, experimentally measured wave field validates the numerical simulation of wave focusing within the GRIN-PCL domain. A piezoelectric energy harvester disk located at the first focus of the GRIN-PCL yields an order of magnitude larger power output as compared to the baseline case of energy harvesting without the GRIN-PCL on the uniform plate counterpart.
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