An investigation on an absorber working through piezoelectric conversion mechanism

Abstract

A novel absorber, which is equivalent to a spring and a damper, is developed and the corresponding equivalent formulae of stiffness coefficient and damping coefficient are derived. The key component of the absorber is the circular array of multi‐section U‐shaped piezoelectric coupled beams (MUPCBs) which can alleviate harmful vibration of various devices by converting the vibration energy into electrical energy. As an example, the absorber is used in a quarter vehicle suspension system, and its properties of energy harvesting and vibration attenuation are studied using the computational model of dual‐mass iteration method. The dual‐mass model includes two sprung masses (body mass and wheel mass) which are linked by the absorber. The effects of some important factors, such as the piezoelectric coupling section (PCS) length, the PCS substrate thickness, the force arm length of the MUPCB, the speed of vehicle and the class of road surface on the root mean square (RMS) of the output power, are discussed. The research results show that half of the amplitude of the harmful vibration can be attenuated and a power up to 254.3 W can be realized by the absorber made of MUPCBs in the quarter vehicle suspension computational case. This research provides a feasible piezoelectric absorber suitable for various devices by transferring the vibration energy into electricity to attenuate the harmful vibration and achieve the energy recycling application.