- Series
- Applied and Computational Mathematics Seminar
- Time
- Monday, January 23, 2012 - 2:05pm for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
- Location
- Skiles 006
- Speaker
- Alper Erturk – Georgia Tech, School of Mechanical Engineering
- Organizer
- Silas Alben
The transformation
of vibrations into low-power electricity has received growing
attention over the last decade. The goal in this research field is to
enable self-powered electronic components by harvesting the
vibrational energy available in their environment. This talk will be
focused on linear and nonlinear vibration-based energy harvesting
using piezoelectric materials, including the modeling and
experimental validation efforts. Electromechanical modeling
discussions will involve both distributed-parameter and
lumped-parameter approaches for quantitative prediction and
qualitative representation. An important issue in energy harvesters
employing linear resonance is that the best performance of the device
is limited to a narrow bandwidth around the fundamental resonance
frequency. If the excitation frequency slightly deviates from the
resonance condition, the power output is drastically reduced. Energy
harvesters based on nonlinear configurations (e.g., monostable and
bistable Duffing oscillators with electromechanical coupling) offer
rich nonlinear dynamic phenomena and outperform resonant energy
harvesters under harmonic excitation over a range of frequencies.
High-energy limit-cycle oscillations and chaotic vibrations in
strongly nonlinear bistable beam and plate configurations are of
particular interest. Inherent material nonlinearities and dissipative
nonlinearities will also be discussed. Broadband random excitation of
energy harvesters will be summarized with an emphasis on stochastic
resonance in bistable configurations. Recent efforts on aeroelastic
energy harvesting as well as underwater thrust and electricity
generation using fiber-based flexible piezoelectric composites will
be addressed briefly.