Equivalent circuit modeling of a piezo-patch energy harvester on a thin plate with AC–DC conversion

Abstract

As an alternative to beam-like structures, piezoelectric patch-based energy harvesters attached to thin plates can be readily integrated to plate-like structures in automotive, marine, and aerospace applications, in order to directly exploit structural vibration modes of the host system without mass loading and volumetric occupancy of cantilever attachments. In this paper, a multi-mode equivalent circuit model of a piezo-patch energy harvester integrated to a thin plate is developed and coupled with a standard AC-DC conversion circuit. Equivalent circuit parameters are obtained in two different ways: (1) from the modal analysis solution of a distributed-parameter analytical model and (2) from the finite-element numerical model of the harvester by accounting for two-way coupling. After the analytical modeling effort, multi-mode equivalent circuit representation of the harvester is obtained via electronic circuit simulation software SPICE. Using the SPICE software, electromechanical response of the piezoelectric energy harvester connected to linear and nonlinear circuit elements are computed. Simulation results are validated for the standard AC-AC and AC-DC configurations. For the AC input-AC output problem, voltage frequency response functions are calculated for various resistive loads, and they show excellent agreement with modal analysis-based analytical closed-form solution and with the finite-element model. For the standard ideal AC input-DC output case, a full-wave rectifier and a smoothing capacitor are added to the harvester circuit for conversion of the AC voltage to a stable DC voltage, which is also validated against an existing solution by treating the singlemode plate dynamics as a single-degree-of-freedom system.

Enhancement of power output by a new stress-applied mode on circular piezoelectric energy harvester

“…Compared with the previous structure, the annular structure's volume decreased by ∼57%, and its energy output density is ∼2.63 mW/cm 3 . No matter how much the thickness of the piezoelectric diaphragm is, the power output of the new structure has improved.…”

“…As a kind of transducer with excellent performance and convenient utilization, piezoelectric energy harvester has attracted much attention. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] It is a potential candidate when collecting surplus mechanical energy. A novel bi-directional piezoelectric energy harvester is introduced by Su and Jean, 11 which can harvest vibration energy bi-directionally due to its composition of two sub-systems.…”

Equivalent circuit representation of a vortex‐induced vibration‐based energy harvester using a semi‐empirical lumped parameter approach

“…Yang and Tang 39 established the ECM considering multiple modes for modeling a multiple degree-of-freedom piezoelectric energy harvester under the base excitation. Bayik et al 40 developed the ECM of an energy harvester consisting of a piezoelectric patch attached to a thin plate.…”

“…Yang and Tang established the ECM considering multiple modes for modeling a multiple degree‐of‐freedom piezoelectric energy harvester under the base excitation. Bayik et al developed the ECM of an energy harvester consisting of a piezoelectric patch attached to a thin plate. Silva et al presented a general equivalent circuit framework for analyzing the dynamic behaviors of piezoelectric structures.…”

Piezoelectric Microstructured Fibers via Drawing of Multimaterial Preforms

“…walking 6 , air flow 7 and heart beating 3, 8 ) into electrical signals. Another application of piezoelectric generators is related to automotive or aerospace industries 9, 10 . Piezoelectric generators or sensors are implanted on the airplanes and vehicles, for the purpose of structural integrity monitoring 11 , as well as powering the on-board electronic systems such as wireless sensor networks (WSNs) with low-power consumption 12, 13 .…”