Theoretical and experimental investigation of parametrically excited piezoelectric energy harvester

In the present work, a cantilever beam based piezoelectric energy harvester is investigated both theoretically and experimentally. The harvester is consists of a harmonically base excited vertical cantilever beam with a piezoelectric patch at the fixed end and a mass attached at an arbitrary position. The Euler-Bernoulli beam theory is applied considering the cantilever beam to be slender. The temporal nonlinear electromechanical governing equation of motion is obtained by using generalized Galerkin’s method considering two-mode approximation. Here for principal parametric resonance condition the steady state response of the voltage is obtained by using the method of multiple scales. The results are validated by developing an experimental setup of the harvester. For the harvester having a dimension of 295 mm×24 mm×7.6 mm, a maximum voltage of 40 V is obtained for a base motion of 9 mm with a frequency of 10.07 Hz when 15 gm mass is attached at a distance of 140 mm from the fixed end