Dynamic behaviour and applications of periodic piezoelastic structures considering nonlinear elastic effects

Abstract

This research project proposes an investigation on the dynamic behavior and performance of piezoelastic systems with the inclusion of intentional nonlinear elastic effects and organized according to a periodic functional array, commonly referred to as metastructue aiming to harvest usually wasted structural vibration signals through the piezoelectric effect. This process is commonly referred to as piezoelectric energy harvesting, a research topic of increasing interest and technological importance in applications involving the use of piezoelectric materials. The functional and periodic arranjement of structural piezoelectric cells forming a metastructure is also a topic of relevance specially due to the large number of practical applications not only on energy harvesting but most importantly in passive vibration and acoustic control. Hence, the main goal of this research proposal is to study the dynamic behavior and performance either theoretically and experimentally of piezoelastic metastructures accounting for nonlinear effects due to external vibration sources of different nature. Particularly, the research will focus on low frequency applications, since most of usually wasted environmental vibration energy contain spectral contents in the 0 100 Hz frequency range. An analytical electromechanical model will be derived for the structure under study and this model will be extensively used in numerically simulations using MATLAB. A physical prototype of the energy harvesting metastructure will be built and experimental tests will be conducted on this prototype in order to gather experimental data to compare with numerically simulated results. It is expected that the outcome of this research can contribute for current discussions on the use of piezoelastic metastructures for energy harvesting applications. (AU)