Vibration energy harvesting by a Timoshenko beam model and piezoelectric transducer

Abstract

Abstract. An electro-mechanical system of vibrational energy harvesting is studied. The beam is excited by external and kinematic periodic forces and damped by an electrical resistor through the coupled piezoelectric transducer. Nonlinearities are introduced by stoppers limiting the transverse displacements of the beam. The interaction between the beam and the stoppers is modeled as Winkler elastic foundation. The mechanical properties of the piezoelectric layer are taken into account and the beam is modeled as a composite structure. For the examined composite beam, the geometrically nonlinear version of the Timoshenko's beam theory is assumed. The equations of motion are derived by the principle of virtual work considering large deflections. An isogeometric approach is applied for space discretization and B-Splines are used as shape functions. Finally, the power output and the efficiency of the system due to harmonic excitations are discussed. The influence of the position of the stoppers and their length on the dynamics of the beam and consequently on the power output are analyzed and presented.

Nonlinear Characterization of a Bistable Energy Harvester Dynamical System

“…2, may present better power recovering performances, when compared to the linear counterparts. The richness of such devices dynamics, combined with the new available improvements in numerical simulation tools and computing resources, have been propelling a wide variety of analysis considering different devices layouts, as seen in [10,18,34,39] for composite and cantilever vibrating beams, or in [11,15,25,26] for inverse pendulum layouts and new designs as those discussed in [5,8,16,33,45].…”

Vibrational tests of a system with two coupled beams and a distributed tip mass

“…1), the distance d play some role in the contact appearance and loss during buckling of one of the beam. These impacting solution can give fairly large power for higher frequency [12].…”

Broadband frequency response of a nonlinear resonator with clearance for energy harvesting

“…Additional nonlinear effects are related to impacts into the amplitude limiters. This effect would be important for energy transduction [12,13] as the final design is expected to be equipped in the piezoelectric patch along the bending beam surface (above the impacting region).…”