Experimental Study on Performance Enhancement of a Piezoelectric Vibration Energy Harvester by applying Self-Resonating Behavior

Abstract

This paper introduces a passive self-tuning energy harvester by applying self-resonating behavior. Under certain operating conditions, self-resonating systems have the capability to passively adjust their dynamical characteristics until the whole system becomes resonant. A clamped-clamped beam with an attached mass sliding freely with a slight gap showed self-resonating behavior. Under a harmonic input excitation and a well-defined operating regime, the mass moved along the beam thus causing a change in the natural frequency of the structure, and then stopped at the position where the natural frequency matched the excitation frequency, resulting in a significant increase in the vibration amplitude. For harvesting energy, a piezoelectric element was glued at one end of the beam. The operating regime of the self-resonating behavior was found experimentally in the two halves of the beam. In the half containing the piezoelectric element, self-resonating behavior was achieved between 126 Hz and 143 Hz. In the other half, it was achieved between 135 Hz and 165 Hz. Maximum power output of 2.5 mW was obtained under an input excitation of 4.92 m/s2 and 148 Hz. It is to be concluded that applying self-resonating behavior on energy harvesting provides a promising broadband technique.

Tuning Techniques for Piezoelectric and Electromagnetic Vibration Energy Harvesters

“…Variable Center of Gravity Based [43][44][45][46][47][48][49] They exploit the fact that in a cantilever with a tip mass it is possible to change the resonance frequency of the structure by varying the position of the center of gravity.…”

“…Variable center of gravity based MTTs exploit the fact that in a cantilever structure with a tip mass it is possible to change the resonance frequency of the structure by varying the position of the center of gravity [43][44][45][46][47][48][49]. In particular, by moving the center of gravity, it is possible to vary the values of both the effective inertial mass and the effective stiffness and hence the value of the resonance frequency.…”

“…In the following, the main variable center of gravity based MTTs are discussed [43][44][45][46]. Additional variable center of gravity based MTTs [48,49] are reported in the Reference Section without a specific description since their working principles are very similar to the ones described in this section.…”

Nonlinear dynamics and triboelectric energy harvesting from a three-degree-of-freedom vibro-impact oscillator

“…Alternatively, some PEH designs use techniques other than frequency up-conversion to harvest energy across relatively wider frequency ranges. Examples of these techniques include the use of variable-width bistable piezoelectric cantilever beams [32] and the use of selfresonating behaviour to create a passive self-tuning PEH [33].…”

Research of piezoelectric energy harvesting systems based on cantilevers with irregular cross-sections

“…Self-tuning was achieved by sliders motion to the node position of excited deformation mode. Such behaviour of the slider leads to significant increment in the vibration amplitude as well as increment in output voltage level (Aboulfotoh and et al 2017).…”