Concurrent attenuation of, and energy harvesting from, surface vibrations: experimental verification and model validation

Fundamental studies in vibrational energy harvesting consider the electromechanically coupled devices to be excited by uniform base vibration. Since many harvester devices are mass–spring systems, there is a clear opportunity to exploit the mechanical resonance in a fashion identical to tuned mass dampers to simultaneously suppress the vibration of the host structure via reactive forces while converting the ‘absorbed’ vibration into electrical power. This paper presents a general analytical model for the coupled electro-elastic dynamics of a vibrating panel to which distributed energy harvesting devices are attached. One such device is described which employs a corrugated piezoelectric spring layer. The model is validated by comparison to measured elastic and electric frequency response functions. Tests on an excited panel show that the device, contributing 1% additional mass to the structure, concurrently attenuates the lowest panel mode accelerance by >20 dB while generating 0.441 µW for a panel drive acceleration of 3.29 m s−2. Adjustment of the load resistance connected to the piezoelectric spring layer verifies the analogy between the present harvester device and an electromechanically stiffened and damped vibration absorber. The results show that maximum vibration suppression and energy harvesting objectives occur for nearly the same load resistance in the harvester circuit.

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