Multi Directional Piezoelectric Plate Energy Harvesters Designed By Topology Optimization Algorithm

Abstract

In this paper, piezoelectric plate energy harvesters are designed by using topology optimization algorithm to harvest the excitation from different directions. The goal is to minimize the volume and weight of the whole structure so the harvesters can be used in small scale applications. To this aim, the profile of polarization is optimized by the topology optimization to overcome charge cancellation which is the main challenge in random direction excitation. Two optimized designs with uniform and non-uniform polarization profiles are obtained. Separated electrodes in the surfaces of the optimized design with nonuniform polarization are used to simulate the polarization profile. Numerical simulations by COMSOL multi-physics software show that the optimized design with separated electrodes can provide 3 times higher voltage and power than those obtained with nonoptimized piezoelectric plate. Experimental investigation demonstrated that the same design with separated electrodes can have 2.17 and 1.93 times higher voltage than the full plate for out of plane and in-plane forces respectively.

Design of Piezoelectric Actuators By Optimizing the Electrodes Topology

“…Presented in [26], SIMP method is easy to implement and suitable for the design of passive structures. Since becoming a conceptual tool for structural design, it has been successfully applied for topological design of active structures in particular piezoelectric structures [23], [24]. This methodology made possible the consideration of the physics of the material within the optimization problem.…”

Experimental Characterization of Optimized Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters for Wearable Sensor Networks

“…The most commonly used and commercially readily available PEH type is a cantilever with a rectangular planar layout. A considerable amount of studies, investigating the influence of geometry on PEHs' response is available in literature [3,5,6,12,[20][21][22][23], mainly focusing on the increase of PEH power density, particularly important for wearable applications, and the broadening of the excitation bandwidth, resulting in a wider applications domain. In order to expand the thus experimentally validated findings on the possibility of replacing a rectangular PEH with trapezoidal or inverse trapezoidal shapes, resulting in a substantial increase in specific power outputs [20], a numerical model is developed using ANSYS ® [3].…”

“…The process of topology optimization has also been applied to PEHs, both to the thickness of the layers as well as to the surface itself, but the resulting geometries, although providing output voltage improvements, are overly complex, while strength considerations are again generally omitted [22,23].…”

Structural Design and Frequency Tuning of Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters Based on Topology Optimization

“…Following these works and inspired by [14] , Salas [15] employed the innovative extension of SIMP called PEMAP-P to optimize the polarization profile of the vPEH in addition to its density layout. Most recently, we applied topology optimization to design actuators [16]- [18] and vPEH under external in-plane force considering different boundary conditions [19], [20] and multi-directional vPEH [21]. In addition to the theoretical aspects, experimental investigations were carried out to demonstrate the vPEH efficiency.…”