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Significance Statement
“The secret of the nature lays on the oscillations”, this is what Nikola Tesla said in a conference where He showed the advantage of using the alternate current rather than the direct one. The oscillation is the most convenient way to transfer a huge amount of energy no matter what is the state of matter. The human beings today have a great opportunity to make one step ahead by using what in name of God We have received by the Nature, the Nature itself. For many years We have been taking advantages of the technological improvements and discovers in order to solve some of the problems the reflect the needs of our life but it seems that an important question needs an answer: what is the border line of these discovers and above all what is it based on? The answer, once again, lays in the economy and on the capability for some important institutions to carry out money from something that is supposed to be at the service of everybody and as matter of fact this is not happening. The industrial companies and public institutions attempt to centralize the source of energy for business purpose and unfortunately this is the reason why some industrialized countries are going through the financial bankruptcy. The energy harvesting by vibration of a piezo-film gives an answer to many problems of energy storage guaranteeing a lifestyle that makes a human being more integrated with the nature. They can be applied in several environments according to the mechanical coupling they exhibit in order to reach the desired frequency of resonance. The capability of the piezoelectric material can represent a new sunrise for the energy harvesting technique because of the different values of peaks of resonance that distinguish the materials one from another.
Figure 1 Legend: Frequency response of the PVDF film describing the voltage sensitivity
Figure 2 Legend: Some of the valid objects for energy harvesting
Journal Reference
Gabriele Barbaraci. Composite Structures, Volume 127, 1 September 2015, Pages 399–410.
44 Topeka Road, M9L 1A2, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to model in a mathematical way the relation between kinematical variables and voltage oscillation as experimentally observed with a PVDF (Polyvinylidene fluoride) piezofilm under dynamical excitation. The dynamic loads induce the vibrations on the piezofilm’s tip. The scientific investigation has been conducted using a laboratory equipment where a piezofilm is excited by a harmonic load. The piezofilm is considered as 1-D beam studied according to the Timoshenko’s theory and discretized by finite element method coupled to its electro-mechanical characteristics. The kinematical variables of each element of the beam are the two vertical displacements and two rotations. The normal stress and axial deformation are not involved in the study in order to make the investigation as simple as possible. The analytical solution of charge displacement depending on the kinematics has been developed in order to compare the results with experimental investigation of the manufacturer.
