Energy Harvesting from Ambient and Aeroelastic Vibrations

Converting vibrations to a usable form of energy has been the topic of many recent investigations. The ultimate goal is to convert ambient or aeroelastic vibrations to operate low-power consumption devices, such as microelectromechanical systems, heath monitoring sensors, wireless sensors or replacing small batteries that have a finite life span or would require hard and expensive maintenance. The transduction mechanisms used for transforming vibrations to electric power include: electromagnetic, electrostatic, and piezoelectric mechanisms. Because it can be used to harvest energy over a wide range of frequencies and because of its ease of application, the piezoelectric option has attracted significant interest. In this book, we investigate the performance of different types of piezoelectric energy harvesters. The objective is to design and enhance the performance of these harvesters. To this end, distributed-parameter and phenomenological models of these harvesters are developed. Global analysis of these models is then performed using modern methods of nonlinear dynamics.