Piezoelectric energy harvesting from vibrations of a beam subjected to multi-moving loads

This study is intended to investigate piezoelectric energy harvesting from vibrations of a beam induced by multi-moving loads. Various multi-moving loads are analyzed by considering various parameters. The system of equations for electro-mechanical materials is derived by using the generalized Hamilton's principle under the assumptions of the Euler–Bernoulli beam theory. The electromechanical behavior of piezoelectric harvesters in a unimorph configuration is analyzed using finite element method. The Newmark's explicit integration technique is adopted for the transient analysis. The predictions of the results of the finite element models are verified by that of the available solutions. The effects of piezoelectric bonding location, velocity and number of moving loads as well as time lags between moving loads on the produced power are investigated. The numerical results show that the investigated parameters have significant effects on the energy harvesting from a vibration of beams under the action of multi-moving loads.     

Longtime dynamics for a novel piezoelectric beam model with creep and thermo-viscoelastic effects

In this work, a novel fully-dynamic piezoelectric beam model is considered. Electromagnetic and thermal effects are taken into consideration by Maxwell’s equations and the Coleman–Gurtin law (instead of the Fourier’s law), respectively. Our model accounts also for thermal and electromagnetic (creep) past histories, which are in line with the time response of PVDF at the applied stress in the longitudinal direction. Under suitable assumptions, the existence and uniqueness of solutions are proved by the semigroup theory. The main purpose of this paper is to establish the longtime dynamics of the model. Therefore, the quasi-stability property of the model and the existence of smooth global attractors with finite fractal dimension are obtained. The existence of exponential attractors for the associated dynamical system is also proved.     

Two Degree-Of-Freedom Online Compensation of a Piezoelectric Micro-Positioning Unit

Due to their almost unlimited resolution and fast dynamics, piezoelectric actuators are a common choice for mechatronic systems targeting positioning tasks with high demands on precision. However, these piezoelectric actuators inherently suffer from nonlinear characteristics (mainly hysteresis and creep effects) which need to be addressed by appropriate control strategies. The operator-based modified Prandtl-Ishlinksii (mPI) approach does not only model hysteresis effects with asymmetries and creep effects but also provides an analytical solution for its inverse model. Online feedforward compensation of the aforementioned nonlinear effects can be realized by using the inverse model and additional weight adaptation. In this paper, online compensation via the mPI model is applied to a commercial micro-positioning unit driven by piezoelectric actuators with more than one degree of freedom (DOF). For validation of the proposed approach, two coupled trajectories in the X-Y plane are utilized. Subsequent tracking error analysis validates the efficacy of the stated approach. (© 2017 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Dynamic response analysis of the two stators hybrid transducer type piezoelectric ultrasonic motor using finite element simulation

This paper presents the finite element simulation with an aim to analyse the dynamic response of the two stators hybrid transducer type piezoelectric ultrasonic motor. The three dimensional–model which includes the effects of piezoelectric coupling are formulated. The dynamic behaviours of a motor stator are calculated and later compared to the experimental results measured from the prototype of this motor. The impedance characteristic of the complete stator is validated using HP4294A precision impedance analyzer. In addition to the electrical measurements, the mechanical displacement and the mechanical velocity of the stator are measured directly using a single point laser Doppler vibrometer. This is to verify that finite element modelling is an appropriate approach to analyse the dynamic behaviour of this piezoelectric ultrasonic motor. (© 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Simulation of nonlinear properties of ferroelectric and piezoceramicmaterials

Ferroelectric and piezoelectric materials are becoming a very significant part of smart materials that are used widely as actuators, sensors and most common applications such as vibration control, precision positioning, precision cutting and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Piezoceramic materials show nonlinear characteristics when they are under high electromechanical loading. In this study, nonlinear behaviour of tetragonal perovskite type piezoceramic materials is simulated using micromechanical model. In the simulations uni‐axial loading is applied. The calculations which are based on a linear constitutive model, nonlinear domain switching model and a model of probability to switch are performed at each grain. The different domain switching effects (900 or 1800 domain switching for tetragonal perovskite structure) due to energy differences, different probability functions, different statistical random generators and material parameters are analyzed. Finally, simulation results are compared with the data of experiments are giving in literature. (© 2004 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Experimental Feasibility Study for Guided Wave Propagation

The paper presents the work on Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) which is now one of the most interesting subjects. Guided propagation of mechanical waves in elastic bodies can be applied in analogy to active phased radar antennas for electromagnetic waves. An array of bonded piezoelectric transducers can generate directed mechanical waves. In the current state of this work experiments on a beam are conducted in order to verify a mathematical model based on integral transform methods. Further experiments for plates and laminates have been designed and checked for feasibility of the mechanical and the electrical implementation. (© 2009 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Compressive and thermal postbuckling behaviors of laminated plates with piezoelectric fiber reinforced composite actuators

This paper studied compressive postbuckling under thermal environments and thermal postbuckling due to a uniform temperature rise for a shear deformable laminated plate with piezoelectric fiber reinforced composite (PFRC) actuators based on a higher order shear deformation plate theory that includes thermo-piezoelectric effects. The material properties are assumed to be temperature-dependent and the initial geometric imperfection of the plate is considered. The compressive and thermal postbuckling behaviors of perfect, imperfect, symmetric cross-ply and antisymmetric angle-ply laminated plates with fully covered or embedded PFRC actuators are conducted under different sets of thermal and electric loading conditions. The results reveal that, the applied voltage usually has a small effect on the postbuckling load–deflection relationship of the plate with PFRC actuators in the compressive buckling case, whereas the effect of applied voltage is more pronounced for the plate with PFRC actuators, compared to the results of the same plate with monolithic piezoelectric actuators.     

Analysis of laminated piezoelectric composite plates using an inverse hyperbolic coupled plate theory

This paper presents a non-polynomial coupled plate theory for smart composite structures employing inverse hyperbolic displacement and electric potential functions. The theory is utilized towards analysis of composite piezoelectric plates operating in sensor and actuator modes. Particularly, the following three cases are studied: (i) passive laminated composite structure, (ii) composite piezoelectric plate actuator and (iii) unimorph and bimorph piezoelectric plate sensors. Analytical solutions are obtained for simply supported plates under static electrical and mechanical loads. These results are validated with existing 3D elasticity solutions and compared with other plate theory solutions. Furthermore, parametric studies are performed to determine the effect of loading, span-to-thickness ratio and lamination sequence on the response of the piezoelectric plate. Finally, the theory is applied to a transverse shear sensing device which utilizes transverse shear-electric field coupling in piezoelectric materials. This effect is often ignored in literature.It is observed that the maximum percentage error of the present theory, when compared with 3D results, is less than 3%, which is lower than other higher order plate theories.     

Relaxation model of piezoelectric materials

Polarization switching inside grains is time dependent. When external applied loading is not quasi-static, macroscopic properties of piezoelectric materials changes with the rate of loading. In this paper, a 2-D micromechanical model is proposed in order to simulate the rate dependent properties of certain perovskite type tetragonal piezoelectric materials based on linear constitutive, nonlinear domain switching, intergranular effects and kinetics models. The material is electrically loaded with an alternating voltage of various frequencies. For the onset of domain switching, energy equation is implemented. Propagation of the domain wall during domain switching in grains is modeled by means of exponential kinetics relation after domain nucleation. Mechanical strain butterfly loops under different frequencies (0.01Hz–1Hz) are simulated. The model gives important insights into the rate dependency of the piezoelectric materials that have been observed in some experiments reported in the literature. (© 2005 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

ALE-based 3D FE simulation of electromagnetic forming

Electromagnetic forming is a contact-free high-speed forming process. The deformation of the work piece is driven by the Lorentz force which results from the interaction of a pulsed magnetic field with eddy currents induced in the work piece by the field itself. The purpose of this work is to present a fully-coupled three-dimensional simulation of this process. For the mechanical structure, a thermoelastic, viscoplastic, electromagnetic material model is relevant, which is incorporated in a large-deformation dynamic formulation. The electromagnetic fields are governed by Maxwell's equations under quasistatic conditions. To consider their reduced regularity at material interfaces Nédélec elements are applied. Coupling takes the form of the Lorentz force, the electromotive intensity and the current geometry of the work piece. A staggered solution scheme based on a Lagrangian mesh for the work piece and an ALE formulation for the electromagnetic field is employed. (© 2006 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Multi-mode model of a piezomagnetoelastic energy harvester under random excitation

Abstract: The transformation of ambient vibrational energy into electric energy through the use of piezoelectric energy harvesting devices has been the subject of numerous investigations [1]. A commonly studied energy harvesting device performing especially well under broadband excitation, is the piezomagnetoelastic energy harvester investigated by Erturk et al. [2], which is usually discretised for the fundamental vibration mode resulting in a single-mode model. This contribution presents the study of a multi-mode model of the piezomagnetoelastic energy harvester under random excitation. The probabilty density function (PDF) is computed to be the solution of the corresponding Fokker-Planck equation using a Galerkin type method [3,4]. Based on the PDF, the resulting voltage variance is computed as a measurement for the expected power output as demonstrated in [5]. The results of the multi-mode model are then compared with the results of the single-mode model. (© 2015 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Variational analysis of fully coupled electro‐elastic frictional contact problems

We consider a mathematical model which describes the static frictional contact between a piezoelectric body and a foundation. The material behavior is described with a nonlinear electro‐elastic constitutive law. The novelty of the model consists in the fact that the foundation is assumed to be electrically conductive and both the frictional contact and the conductivity on the contact surface are described with subdifferential boundary conditions which involve a fully coupling between the mechanical and electrical variables. We derive a variational formulation of the problem which is in the form of a system coupling two hemivariational inequalities for the displacement and the electric potential fields, respectively. Then we prove the existence of a weak solution to the model and, under additional assumptions, its uniqueness. The proofs are based on recent results for inclusions of subdifferential type in Sobolev spaces (© 2010 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

New schemes for the finite-element dynamic analysis of piezoelectric devices

New finite-element schemes are proposed for investigating harmonic and non-stationary problems for composite elastic and piezoelectric media. These schemes develop the techniques for the finite-element analysis of piezoelectric structures based on symmetric and partitioned matrix algorithms. In order to take account of attenuation in piezoelectric media, a new model is used which extends the Kelvin model for viscoelastic media. It is shown that this model enables the system of finite-element equations to be split into separate scalar equations. The Newmark scheme in a convenient formulation, which does not explicitly use the velocities and accelerations of the nodal degrees of freedom, is employed for the direct integration with respect to time of the finite-element equations of non-stationary problems. The results of numerical experiments are presented which illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed techniques and their implementation in the ACELAN finite-element software package.     

Modeling of electrodynamic-mechanical coupling phenomena in smart magnetoelectroelastic materials

The coupling of electric, magnetic and mechanical phenomena may have various reasons. The famous Maxwell equations of electrodynamics describe the interaction of transient magnetic and electric fields. On the constitutive level of dielectric materials, coupling mechanisms are manyfold comprising piezoelectric, magnetostrictive or magnetoelectric effects. Electromagnetically induced specific forces acting at the boundary and within the domain of a dielectric body are, within a continuum mechanics framework, commonly denoted as Maxwell stresses. In transient electromagnetic fields, the Poynting vector gives another contribution to mechanical stresses. First, a system of transient partial differential equations is presented. Introducing scalar and vector potentials for the electromagnetic fields and representing the mechanical strain by displacement fields, seven coupled differential equations govern the boundary value problem, accounting for linear constitutive equations of magnetoelectroelasticity. To reduce the effort of numerical solution, the system of equations is partly decoupled applying generalized forms of Coulomb and Lorenz gauge transformations [1,2]. A weak formulation is given to establish a basis for a finite element solution. The influence of constitutive magnetoelectric coupling on electromagnetic wave propagation is finally demonstrated with a simple one-dimensional example. (© 2015 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Effects of electric and mechanical loads on the morphological evolution of a void in piezoelectric films

This paper reports the result of an investigation into the effect of electric and mechanical loads on the morphological evolution of a void in piezoelectric materials based on a model for the morphological evolution of a void, the thermodynamics potential and energy principle. Thus, the path and the bifurcation condition of the morphological evolution of the void in piezoelectric materials are described, which gives some insight into the reliability of piezoelectric films under electric and mechanical loads.     

Static and dynamic analysis of smart cylindrical shell

Shell type components and structures are very common in many mechanical and structural systems. In smart structural applications, piezolaminated plates and shells are commonly used. In this paper a finite element formulation is presented to model the static and dynamic response of laminated composite shells containing integrated piezoelectric sensors and actuators subjected to electrical, mechanical and thermal loadings. The formulation is based on the first order shear deformation theory and Hamilton's principle. In this formulation, the mass and stiffness of the piezo-layers have been taken into account. A nine-noded degenerated shell element is implemented for the analysis. The model is validated by comparing with existing results documented in the literature. A simple negative velocity feedback control algorithm coupling the direct and converse piezoelectric effects is used to actively control the dynamic response of an integrated structure through a closed control loop. The influence of the stacking sequence and position of sensors/actuators on the response of the laminated cylindrical shell is evaluated. Numerical results show that piezoelectric sensors/actuators can be used to control the shape and vibration of laminated composite cylindrical shell.     

Piezoelectric beams under small strains but large displacements and rotations

Small strains are consistently incorporated into a model to describe the behavior of piezoelectric beams subjected to large displacements and rotations. While the displacement is assumed to vary in accordance with the Timoshenko assumption, the electric potential has linear variation through each piezoelectric layer thickness. The strong geometric nonlinear effect on the beam electroelastic response is illustrated by static problems of cantilever beams with tip loads and distributed sensing or actuation. The present work seems to be the first to obtain analytical solutions for beams under large displacements and rotations with piezoelectric sensors. One believes that the quality of such solutions can be valuable to validate results predicted by approximate methods.     

Modeling of AFM with a piezoelectric layer based on the modified couple stress theory with geometric discontinuities

AFM has been one of the most accurate instruments for measuring intermolecular forces and surface topography in the nano-scale. Micro-cantilever (MC) with piezoelectric layer has been used to improve the AFM performance. The Classic Continuum Mechanics (CCM) which currently used to develop the governing equation leads to noticeable errors. Hence, the accuracy of the governing equations for examining the MC vibrational behavior needs to be improved by using a modified model. In response to this need, the Modified Couple Stress theory (MCS) based on the Timoshenko beam model has been employed in this research. The governing equations have been derived using the Hamilton's principle and solved using the Differential Quadrature (DQ) method. In the modeling, the geometric discontinuities resulting from the presence of a piezoelectric layer enclosed between electrodes and MC surface area variations resulting from the connection of the probe to the MC have been considered. Moreover, the coupling effects of piezoelectric on MC stiffness have been taken into account. The results have revealed that the size parameter not only affects the frequency and amplitude but also improves the accuracy of the results when compared with the CCM theory. Moreover, the effects of geometric parameters on the piezoelectric MC frequency have been examined.