Study the Effect of Tapering on the Nonlinear Behavior of an Exponentially Varying Width Piezoelectric Energy Harvester

Abstract

It has been shown that exponentially tapering the width of a vibration-based piezoelectric energy harvester will result in increasing electric power per mass in a specified frequency. In this paper, a nonlinear solution of an exponentially decreasing width piezoelectric energy harvester is presented. Piezoelectric, inertial, and geometric nonlinearities are included in the presented model, while the exponentially tapered piezoelectric beam's mass normalized mode shapes are utilized in Galerkin discretization. The developed nonlinear coupled equations of motion are solved using method of multiple scales (MMS), and the steady states results are verified by experiment in high amplitude excitation. Finally, the exponentially tapering parameter effect is studied, and it is concluded that the voltage per mass of the energy harvester is improved by tapering at high exciting acceleration amplitudes.

Optimization of the shaping function of a tapered piezoelectric energy harvester using tabu continuous ant colony system

“…The optimization procedure for maximizing the output voltage per mass of the energy harvester results in 8.88 for the tapering parameter and 22.7 g for the tip mass value. The experiments were performed using two models: first the optimized model and second the model with tapering parameter c = 11.55 and tip mass of 21.5 g Salmani and Rahimi (2018). The variation of the cross-sections of the models is shown in Figure 5.…”

“…For experimental evaluation test, the same equipment as in the works of Salmani et al (2015) and Salmani and Rahimi (2018) is employed, but with different beam geometries. The electrodes of the piezoelectric layer are connected to a NI USB4431 data acquisition system (DAQ).…”

“…An accelerometer is attached to the shaker to measure the base exciting acceleration, and another accelerometer is also attached to the beam’s tip to measure its response acceleration. The mass of the accelerometer and a steel cube at the beam’s tip is 22.7 g for the optimized model and 21.5 g for the second model Salmani and Rahimi (2018). The setup is shown in Figure 6.…”

“…Different types of tapering have been investigated by researchers using numerical and semi-analytical methods (Benasciutti et al, 2010; Dietl and Garcia, 2010; Mateu and Moll, 2005; Matova et al, 2013; Park et al, 2012; Rosa and De Marqui, 2014). Salmani et al (2015) and Salmani and Rahimi (2018) presented an exact analytical solution to simulate the dynamical and electrical behavior of an exponentially tapered energy harvester. They showed that exponential tapering may lead to extract more voltage and power per mass of the piezoelectric energy harvester.…”

Theoretical and Experimental Studies on MEMS Variable Cross-Section Cantilever Beam Based Piezoelectric Vibration Energy Harvester

“…Baker et al [ 19 ] pointed out that changing the beam’s cross-section linearly along its length increases the energy harvesters’ output power density up to 30%. Salmani and Rahimi [ 20 ] proposed an exact analytical solution to simulate an exponentially tapered energy harvester’s dynamical and electrical behavior. The results show that exponential tapering may lead to extract more voltage and power per mass of the piezoelectric energy harvester.…”