1. Analytical modelling of a nanoscale series-connected bimorph piezoelectric energy harvester incorporating the flexoelectric effect.
- Author
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Basutkar, Ritesh
- Subjects
- *
ENERGY density , *FLEXOELECTRICITY , *POWER density , *ANALYTICAL solutions , *EIGENFUNCTIONS , *DENSITY currents , *HAMILTON-Jacobi equations - Abstract
This paper concerns the derivation of analytical solutions for a nanoscale series-connected bimorph piezoelectric energy harvester incorporating the flexoelectric and the non-local effects. The complexity involved in a parallel-connected bimorph piezoelectric energy harvester case is also briefly discussed here. Considering electric Gibbs free energy density and Euler Bernoulli beam theory, the governing equations and associated boundary condition are derived using the extended Hamilton principle. The convergent series of eigenfunctions and generalised modal coordinates related to mechanical deformation is utilised to obtain the closed-form analytical solutions for non-periodic and harmonic base excitations. The modelled harvester is validated separately from piezoelectric as well as flexoelectric point of views. Results for harmonic base excitations show that, at each excitation frequency, the consideration of flexoelectric effect in series connected bimorph piezoelectric energy harvester abruptly increases the voltage, current and power density outputs whereas it decreases the tip velocity. Here, the addition of flexoelectricity enhances the power density by ten times. The benchmark presented here may be useful for the verification of future experiments and the present study suggests that the flexoelectric effect is a significant aspect for the effective exploitation of bimorph piezoelectric energy harvester in advanced applications such as smart nanosensors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2019
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