The Piezoelectric Phenomenon in Energy Harvesting Scenarios: A Theoretical Study of Viable Applications in Unbalanced Rotor Systems

Abstract

The present paper deals with the promising energy harvesting applications of a composite piezoelectric metal support that is properly designed for the rotor of a mechanical system. The aim is to determine whether the vibrational power coming from the static residual imbalance, which is generally considered to be an undesired and useless side-effect of the rotation, can be converted into electric power and then stored to be used in other applications. The analysis, starting from the Jeffcott rotor model and the piezoelectric constitutive equations, has been carried out by developing an approximated linear model of a piezoelectric support, in order to theoretically evaluate the performance and the feasibility of the proposed system. The accuracy of the exploited analytical model has been validated for both static and dynamic operations by 3D Ansys® Mechanical APDL. Finally, a MatLab®/Simulink® model has been built to simulate the electric behavior of the piezoelectric material, and to estimate the power that it is possible to extract via an alternative/direct current converter (AC/DC converter). The numerical results achieved confirm the effectiveness of the proposed energy-harvesting system.

Harvesting Energy from Planetary Gear Using Piezoelectric Material

“…Rotational mechanical energy is one of the important power sources for piezoelectric energy harvesting. Different types of rotational power sources have been used in the past decades for piezoelectric energy harvestings, such as rotational machines [6][7][8][9][10], human motion [11,12], vehicle tires [13][14][15][16][17], and even air, wind and fluids [18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. They have been applied in different applications such as WSNs in any rotary machine [8,25], tire pressure-monitoring systems (TPMSs) [26][27][28], wearable devices, and medical implants [29][30][31][32].…”

“…The rotation direction and the ratio of transmission in the planetary gear system would change according to which gear is the input and output, and which gear is fixed. This type is the planetary type, which is the same as the case of the proposed study; the ring gear is held fixed (R), the sun gear (S) will be the input, and the carrier (C) will be the output, and transmission ratio can be found by Equation (10).…”

Recent advances in flexible PVDF based piezoelectric polymer devices for energy harvesting applications

“…Technological solutions using onboard autonomous energy harvesters is the main remedy to this challenge as they can convert widely available thermal (waste heat) or mechanical (vibrations) energy into electrical energy (Jacobson et al, 2017; Paradiso and Starner, 2005). Several studies have focused on these types of energy harvesters which is an ideal candidate that can be used in micromechanical systems (MEMS), smart structures, wireless sensors, biomedical implants, wearable electronics, bendable devices (Dannier et al, 2019; Kudela et al, 2018; Liu et al, 2018; Song et al, 2017a. Various sources such as solar, wind, thermal energy, mechanical vibrations are available for the energy generations (Caliò et al, 2014; Shehata et al, 2020).…”

Rotational Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting: A Comprehensive Review on Excitation Elements, Designs, and Performances

“…Rotational mechanical energy is one of the significant power sources for piezoelectric energy harvesting. Various types of rotational power sources have been used in the past few years for piezoelectric energy harvesting, such as rotational machines [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18], vehicle tire [19][20][21][22][23], human motion [24][25][26][27][28], and even wind [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36] and fluids [31,32,[37][38][39][40][41]. They have been applied in various applications, such as tire pressure monitoring system TPMS [42][43][44], WSNs in any rotary machine [11,45,46], wearable device and medical implants [47][48][49][50][51], and others.…”