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Modeling of Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting from an L-shaped Beam-mass Structure with an Application to UAVs

¹ Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics, Center for Intelligent Material Systems and Structures Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, Center for Intelligent Material Systems and Structures, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed.

	Abstract

Cantilevered piezoelectric energy harvesters have been extensively investigated in the literature of energy harvesting. As an alternative to conventional cantilevered beams, this article presents the L-shaped beam-mass structure as a new piezoelectric energy harvester configuration. This structure can be tuned to have the first two natural frequencies relatively close to each other, resulting in the possibility of a broader band energy harvesting system. This article describes the important features of the L-shaped piezoelectric energy harvester configuration and develops a linear distributed parameter model for predicting the electromechanically coupled voltage response and displacement response of the harvester structure. After deriving the coupled distributed parameter model, a case study is presented to investigate the electrical power generation performance of the L-shaped energy harvester. A direct application of the L-shaped piezoelectric energy harvester configuration is proposed for use as landing gears in unmanned air vehicle applications and a case study is presented where the results of the L-shaped – energy harvester – landing gear are favorably compared against the published experimental results of a curved beam configuration used for the same purpose.

Key Words: piezoelectricity, energy harvesting, unmanned air vehicles.

First published on November 20, 2008, doi:10.1177/1045389X08098096

Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures 2009;20:529.

A more recent version of this article appeared on March 1, 2009


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