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Investigation of piezoelectric bending actuator for application in kinetic energy harvesting R. Dauksevicius*, I. Milasauskaite*, V. Ostasevicius*, R. Gaidys*
Abstract The study reports on numerical modeling cantilever-type piezoceramic actuator intended for vibration energy harvesting applications. The developed finite element model represents an electromechanically coupled system, which takes into account the influence of external resistive load on the electric and dynamic behavior of the piezoelectric actuator subjected to harmonic base excitation. It was proven that the magnitude of load resistance has a significant effect on the actuator tip displacement, resonant frequency and power output.

Nowadays there is wide variety of battery-powered supplied wireless sensor nodes, monitoring process temperatures, system pressures and machine vibrations occurring in manufacturing and industry, as well as taking care of container security/tracking, biomedical implants, military monitoring devices and structural health monitoring. However, these sensors have been historically expensive to deploy in applied environments due to inconvenient mounting and complicated service, especially including battery replacement. Because of the large numbers of nodes in wireless sensor
networks and of their small size, changing the battery is unpractical or simply not feasible. Increasing the size of the battery to ensure energy autonomy during the lifetime of the wireless sensor system would increase system size and cost beyond what is tolerable. Thus, combination of an energy harvester with a

small-sized rechargeable battery is the best approach to enable energy autonomy of the sensor networks over the entire lifetime. Since battery energy density has increased only by
a factor of 3 over the past 15 years and present battery technology roadmap has only a two times capacity improvement every decade, while the power demand is predicted to increase at the rate of two times every 18 months [1], resulting in a huge energy gap for devices powering, the interest of many researchers has focused on the micro-energy harvesters.

Some possible energy sources for wireless sensors include photonic, thermal and mechanical energy. However, only mechanical energy can be found in instances where thermal or
photonic energy is not suitable (e.g., low-light, dirty conditions), which makes extracting energy from mechanical energy the most attractive alternative approach [2]. Mechanical energy conversion employs piezoelectric, electromagnetic and electrostatic transduction. Electromagnetic method is best suited for large systems; electrostatic method faces the limitation of their high impedance and output voltages, meanwhile piezoelectric converters are capable of harvesting energy for all size levels, thus currently capturing the greatest interest o researchers. The main issue, associated with piezoelectric vibration energy harvesters is that their maximum generated electrical power drops dramatically at low frequencies [3], when the resonant frequency of the piezoelectric structure does not match the ambient frequency and, especially, when the external resistive load is incorporated into vibration energy harvesting system. Thus, numerous researches [4] on piezoelectric vibration energy harvesters have been focused on the maximum power generation through structural modification, resonance frequency tuning, or electric circuit adaptation.

Description of the entire energy harvesting process requires an understanding of the mechanical vibrations of the structure, the electromechanics of the piezoelectric transduction, and the dynamic behavior of the electrical circuit, which are all three coupled. The first is well-known, while the incorporation of the second and currently capturing greatest interest of the energy harvesting research community. It
is often advised to use the finite element method to model the fully coupled components of the piezoelectric harvesting structure, namely the structural dynamics, electromechanics, and electrode conduction, while a lumped parameter approach is used to model the circuit dynamics. As it is known from the literature [6], piezoelectric vibration energy harvesters are usu-

ally connected with electronic circuit that might consist of capacitor to store energy, rectifier to convert from ac to dc converter or load resistors to evaluate generated power. All these means should transform harvested electric energy into usable form. Nevertheless, most of current piezoelectric vibration energy harvester models assume the vibration amplitude of the device is independent of the connected circuit. Erturk and Inman [7] have already warned to use these representations in the electrical domain in the

2 models, because the complete representation of the coupled electromechanical effect is actually a transformer. Ignoring the backward piezoelectric coupling and using the optimum load for the maximum power is incorrect.

However, it was discovered recently [8] that increasing load resistance of the connected circuit, not only influences the electrical characteristics, but also the dynamic response of the system changes. Following the theory [8], governing equations for electrical outputs of a piezoelectric energy harvester, can be derived as:
VR (t ) = I R (t ) R
PR (t ) = VR (t ) I R (t )

where VR(t) represents the voltage across the load resistor; IR(t) the current through it; and PR(t) the power dissipated by the load resistor, actually indicating power generated by the piezoelectric energy harvester. If the harvester is directly connected to a load resistor, the relationship between the output of the piezoelectric energy harvester and the input become:
V p (t ) = VR (t ) I R (t ) = wQ p (t )

This means that voltage and current through out load resistor and therefore power and displacement of the harvester are coupled together, and proving the influence of the external load to the performance of piezoelectric energy harvester. Knowing this theory, this research concentrates on numerical modeling of cantilever-type piezoceramic actuator intended for vibration energy harvesting applications, placing the greatest emphasis on developing finite element model which represents an electromechanically coupled system, taking into account the influence of external resistive load on the electric and dynamic behavior of the piezoelectric actuator subjected to harmonic base excitation. Namely, effects of the external load on the beams tip displacement and also on the electric outputs of current, voltage, and power are considered. Finite Element Model of electromechanically coupled piezoelectric energy harvesting system is created employing COMSOL Multiphysics software. The finite element model with of cantilever beam with geometrical characteris that are listed in Table 1, is assumed to undergo bending vibrations due to the harmonic base excitation. Fig.1 depicts this at one end clamped beam, with piezoceramic PZT-5A layer on the silicon substrate. Piezoceramic layer is assumed to be fully covered by conductive electrodes and piezoceramic and substrate materials are assumed to be perfectly bonded to each other. As continuous electrode covering piezoceramic layers is assumed to be very thin when compared to the overall thicknesses of the piezoelectric energy harvester, their contribution to the thickness dimension is negligible. These electrodes are tought to be perfectly conductive, so that a single electric potential difference can be defined across them. Therefore, the instantaneous electric fields induced in the piezoceramic layer is assumed to be uniform throughout the length of the beam. The external electric load is introduced to electromechanically coupled system employing SPICE circuit editor. SPICE Circuit Import feature is commonly used to add circuit elements as variables to a COMSOL Multiphysics model and these variables can be connected to a physical device model to perform co-simulations of circuits and multiphysics. For this research the resistive load of , lets say, 50M introduced via
prompt below: R1 0 1 50Meg X1 0 1 Piezo .SUBCKT Piezo sens1 sens2 COMSOL: * .ENDS

As mentioned before, piezoelectric actuator is subjected to harmonic base excitation, thus continuous electrical outputs can be extracted from the

electromechanical system. Only the fundamental resonance frequency and no higher modes of vibration are considered in this model. Further modeling results in Fig. 3-5 reveal the expected: increasing load resistance of the connected circuit, not only influences the electrical characteristics (decreasing current, increasing voltage), but also the dynamic response of the system changes (resonant frequency slightly increases and change in vibrational amplitudes may be noted). The displacement at the maximum power point is reduced as the load resistance approaches the overall impedance of the circuit. The load resistance reduces the motion amplitude at the short-circuit resonance frequency up to a load value (so-called optimum load) and enlarges the motion amplitude at the open circuit resonance frequency. The current (~1.15 A) at the optimum load was found to be approximately equal to half of its short-circuit value (2.2 A), as in Fig.3. The resonance frequency of the system has not changed dramatically the frequency difference would not exceed 15 Hz (Fig. 5) - it is assumed that this frequency difference is resulting from backward coupling. One may also note the fact that the strain as a function of the beam deflection at the optimum load has a different value than that under extreme conditions (short or open circuit), as in Fig. 4. The reduction in the displacement at the optimum load could be ascribed to the electrically damped motion. A vibrating MEMS-based cantilever device at a short circuit is only mechanically damped as no electric power is consumed. As the connected load resistance approaches the optimum load, mechanical energy is partly transferred to electrical energy. This harvested electrical energy is considered as an electrical damping which is added to the still present mechanical damping. Eventually, the total damping (mechanical and electrical) will lead to attenuation in the tip displacement. As potential for piezoelectric energy-harvesting systems is great and spans many industries and sectors, including self-energizing MEMS, sensor and biomedical structural applications and regenerative energy harvesting, material development and development of design approaches must be pursued to improve the capabilities for energy-harvesting devices. This research has concentrated on the development of finite element model of piezoelectric energy harvester prototype, representing an electromechanically coupled system, which takes into account the influence of external resistive load on the electric and dynamic behavior of the piezoelectric actuator subjected to harmonic base excitation. It was proven that the magnitude of load resistance has a significant effect on the actuator tip displacement, resonant frequency and power output. These theoretical models are to be validated experimentally in the future, employing commercial piezoelectric actuator mounted on the vibrational stand consisting of electromagnetic shaker with function generator and amplifier for harmonic excitation of the mounted actuator, miniature accelerometer for registration of base excitation level, differential laser Doppler vibrometer for actuator tip response measurements and analog-to-digital converter with software for signal processing and visualization.