Abstract
Piezoelectric transduction has received great attention for vibration-to-electric energy conversion in the last ten years. A typical PZT harvester is a cantilever subject due to its easy implementation. It has been investigated in regard to its harvesting capacity under various conditions. However, its electro-mechanical properties hasn’t gotten involved enough, which is in fact crucial for comprehending the intrinsic properties. Given that, this paper set out to explore the electro-mechanical characteristics of a cantilever beam from a laminated PZT patch by means of experiment and modeling studies. In the test, the PZT cantilever is magnetize by a tip mass, then connected into a circuit with a resistor and vibrated by an exciter. Through tuning excitation frequency, mass weight and resistances load, an optimal settings are summarized for obtaining more harvested energy in the system. Besides, the electro-mechanical behavior is investigated that demonstrates nonlinear hysteretic. On the basis, electromechanical model is presented to accurately mimic the aforementioned nonlinear behavior of the PZT harvester. The presented study has revealed that a proper choice of harvesting system with an accurate model can further exploit energy potentiality in piezoelectric material so as to apply its energy harvesting capability into much more extensive engineering fields.
