Energy Harvesting From a Non-Prisimatic Cantilever Beam

Abstract

Non-prismatic beams are of incredible significance in diverse fields of designing, whose cross-sectional profile changes bit by bit along their length. These beams not just meet the structural and aesthetical needs additionally advance the weight and quality of the structure. Piezoelectric materials can be used as transducers to harvest energy from vibrating structures. Here a cantilever beam with exponentially decreasing tapered profile in length and width direction is used as the host and it carries a piezoelectric patch of PZT(PIC-255) on top of it. A simple transverse mode type piezoelectric generator model based on Euler–Bernoulli beam theory with the following assumptions is presented:
(a) The thickness of PZT is very small in comparison to length of the beam.
(b) Electric field above and below of PZT is uniform. We used this model to predict the power generated by the use of MATLAB coding. Our aim is to compare this result with the power from a simple prismatic cantilever beam.