A Two‐Step Hybrid Approach for Modeling the Nonlinear Dynamic Response of Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters

Abstract

An effective hybrid computational framework is described here in order to assess the nonlinear dynamic response of piezoelectric energy harvesting devices. The proposed strategy basically consists of two steps. First, fully coupled multiphysics finite element (FE) analyses are performed to evaluate the nonlinear static response of the device. An enhanced reduced-order model is then derived, where the global dynamic response is formulated in the state-space using lumped coefficients enriched with the information derived from the FE simulations. The electromechanical response of piezoelectric beams under forced vibrations is studied by means of the proposed approach, which is also validated by comparing numerical predictions with some experimental results. Such numerical and experimental investigations have been carried out with the main aim of studying the influence of material and geometrical parameters on the global nonlinear response. The advantage of the presented approach is that the overall computational and experimental efforts are significantly reduced while preserving a satisfactory accuracy in the assessment of the global behavior.

Modelling and parameter identification of electromechanical systems for energy harvesting and sensing

“…where ζ 1 is the first modal mechanical damping ratio, ω 1 is the first undamped natural frequency, θ 1 is the modal electromechanical coupling terms, F 1 is the first modal mechanical forcing function, C 1 is the capacitance, R 1 is the load resistance and υ = (V t − V b ) is the voltage response across the external resistive load. For further information on the device material properties and geometry, the interested reader can refer to [49]. In practice, this is a single input (F 1 ) and multiple output (η 1 and υ) system.…”

“…Actually, the identification of electromechanical modal parameters of piezoelectric structures is important to enable a correct implementation of these devices for energy harvesting, vibration control and health monitoring applications [48]. Reduced-order modal models can usually arise from numerical finite element (FE) [49] or distributed analytical approaches [21,23]. Porfiri et al [25] proposed two techniques for estimating piezoelectric modal couplings and piezoelectric modal capacitances.…”

Feasibility of energy harvesting from vertical pedestrian‐induced vibrations of footbridges for smart monitoring applications

“…Electromechanical characteristics of the piezoelectric material are taken from Maruccio et al. (2016), whereas the thickness values refer to a commercially available cantilever bimorph made of standard PVDF films already investigated within past studies (Elvin et al., 2006; Elvin & Elvin, 2012; Maruccio et al., 2018). Finally, length and width of the piezoelectric beam are assumed constant values, with $$l=90\,\textrm {mm}$$ and $$b=30\,\textrm {mm}$$.…”

“…The optimal value of 𝐝 is carried out by solving Equation (8) for 𝑢 max = 0.25𝑙 so as to ensure an essentially linear behavior in agreement with previous studies on piezoelectric energy harvesters (Elvin & Elvin, 2012;Maruccio et al, 2018). The amplitude of the design harmonic load η𝑑 (𝑡) is the mean of the peak accelerations carried out from a preliminary set of 1 × 10 4 simulations.…”