Optimum Design of Cantilevered Piezoelectric Harvester Based on Distributed Parameter Model

In the past decade, there have been numerous studies which showed the feasibility of harvesting electrical energy from vibrating structures. The main goal of this study is first to generate a Finite Element (FE) model using ANSYS to verify an existing harvesting model. This FEM model can be used as a base for designing more complex harvesters. The second goal of this study is to optimize the parameters of a simple cantilever harvester to maximize the power generation from ambient mechanical energy. A distributed parameter model and its modal solution are used to identify the design variables through a parametric study. The results obtained using the distributed parametric model is compared with the results obtained using ANSYS. It is of interest to ensure adequate power generation under non-resonant conditions for a broad band excitation. The average power within a certain frequency range is used as the cost function to define optimization problem along with some geometric and physical constraints. We found that, in certain frequency ranges, the parameters can be optimized to generate maximum power. Having validated the methodology, work is in progress to design and optimize harvesters with complex geometries.