https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2015-02593-5
Regular Article
Effect of boundary conditions on piezoelectric buckled beams for vibrational noise harvesting
NiPS Laboratory, Dipartimento di Fisica e Geologia, Università di Perugia, 06123 Perugia, Italy
Received: 22 August 2015
Revised: 9 September 2015
Published online: 20 November 2015
Nonlinear bistable systems have proven to be advantageous for energy harvesting of random and real ambient vibrations. One simple way of implementing a bistable transducer is setting a piezoelectric beam in a post-buckled configuration by axial compression. Besides, hinged or clamped-clamped type of boundary conditions correspond to two different post-buckled shape functions. Here we study, through theoretical analysis and numerical simulations, the efficiency of a hinged and clamped-clamped piezoelectric bridge under band-limited random noise with progressive axial load. Clamped configuration results to harvest 26% more power than hinged around an optimal axial load of 0.05%, while, in the intra-well trapped situation, above 0.1%, the two configurations present no substantial difference. Nevertheless, simulations confirm the advantage of exploiting inter-well oscillations in bistable regime.
© EDP Sciences, Springer-Verlag, 2015
