Jia Xu1 , Ming-Yi Luan2 , Zhi-Wen Zhu3 , Kang-Kang Guo4
1, 2, 3, 4School of Mechanical Engineering, Tianjin University, 92 Weijin Road, Tianjin, 300072, P. R. China
1Tianjin Key Laboratory of Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos Control, 92 Weijin Road, Tianjin, 300072, P. R. China
4Corresponding author
Journal of Vibroengineering, Vol. 16, Issue 3, 2014, p. 1240-1247.
Received 11 October 2013; received in revised form 6 December 2013; accepted 13 December 2013; published 15 May 2014
Copyright © 2014 JVE International Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Stochastic bifurcation characteristics of cantilevered piezoelectric energy harvester were studied in this paper. Von de Pol differencial item was introduced to interpret the hysteretic phenomena of piezoelectric ceramics, and then the nonlinear dynamic model of piezoelectric cantilever beam subjected to axial stochastic excitation was developed. The stochastic stability of the system was analyzed, and the steady-state probability density function and the joint probability density function of the dynamic response of the system were obtained, and then the conditions of stochastic Hopf bifurcation were analyzed. Numerical simulation shows that stochastic Hopf bifurcation appears when bifurcation parameter varies, which can increase vibration amplitude of cantilever beam system and improve the efficiency of piezoelectric energy harvester. Finally, the theoretical and numerical results were proved by experiments. The results of this paper are helpful to application of cantilevered piezoelectric energy harvester in engineering fields.
Keywords: piezoelectric energy harvester, hysteretic loop, stochastic bifurcation.
Piezoelectric ceramics is a kind of smart material. It can be used to convert mechanical energy into electrical energy, which is known as piezoelectric effect. Based on this effect, piezoelectric energy harvester can be designed to gather vibration energy of structures. Compared with other kinds of power generation systems, piezoelectric energy harvester has many advantages, such as small size, high electro-mechanical conversion efficiency, long service life, and low cost, which cause it be applied as green energy widely.
Many scholars studied piezoelectric energy harvester. DuToit designed MEMS-scale piezoelectric mechanical vibration energy harvesters firstly [1]. Erturk developed the mechanical model of cantilevered piezoelectric vibration energy harvesters [2]. Priya proposed the criterion for material selection in design of bulk piezoelectric energy harvesters [3]. Liao studied parameters optimization and power characteristics of piezoelectric energy harvesters with RC circuit [4]. Although many advances were obtained, the modeling problem limits the application of cantilever piezoelectric energy harvester in industry fields. In order to optimize piezoelectric energy harvester effectively, it is necessary to build a model in high accuracy to describe the nonlinear characteristics of piezoelectric energy harvester.
Due to the hysteretic characteristics of piezoelectric ceramics, most of the piezoelectric models were shown as equations with subsection function or double integral function, which were hard to be analyzed in theory [5-9]. Usually, research results could only be obtained by numerical or experiment method [10, 11]. In this paper, hysteretic nonlinear theory was introduced to develop a new kind of continuous piezoelectric model, and then stochastic bifurcation characteristics of cantilevered piezoelectric energy harvester were analyzed.
The voltage-displacement curve of piezoelectric ceramics was shown in Fig. 1. Obviously, there is hysteretic nonlinearity in piezoelectric ceramics.
Fig. 1. The displacement-voltage curves of piezoelectric ceramics
In this paper, Von del Pol hysteretic model was introduced to describe the hysteretic nonlinear characteristics of piezoelectric ceramics. The initial Von del Pol hysteretic model describes hysteretic loop which is symmetrical about the initial point (). It can be shown as follows:
where is skeleton curve of hysteretic loop and usually expressed in polynomial function, and are coefficients which determine the difference between the skeleton curve and the real curve. The essence of Von del Pol item are two parabolic lines which are symmetrical about the original point ().
Supposing the displacement-voltage curves of piezoelectric ceramics is symmetrical about the point , it can be shown as follows:
where is voltage, is displacement, are coefficients, skeleton curve is chosen as .
since the loading curve have the same value as the unloading curve when , and because the initial voltage of piezoelectric ceramics is zero. Thus, Eq. (2) can be rewritten as follows:
where , , , , .
The structure of cantilevered piezoelectric energy harvester was shown in Fig. 2. It can be regarded as cantilever composite beam. The mechanical model of cantilevered piezoelectric energy harvester was shown in Fig. 3, where the thickness of adhesive layer was ignored.
According to Hamilton's principle, we obtained:
where is kinetic energy of structure, is potential energy of structure, is electric energy of piezoelectric ceramics, is work done by external force:
where is density of substrate and PZT piezoelectric ceramics, where the subscript is substrate, is PZT piezoelectric ceramics; is volume, is stress, is strain; is deflection of composite cantilever beam, is electric field intensity, is electrostrictive displacement, is axial stochastic excitation, is intensity of stochastic excitation, is Gauss white nosie whose mean is zero and intensity is , is electric potential, is electric charge.
Fig. 2. The structure of cantilevered piezoelectric energy harvester
Fig. 3. The mechanical model of cantilevered piezoelectric energy harvester
The dynamic equation of piezoelectric cantilever beam subjected to axial stochastic excitation can be obtained as follows:
where is damping, is stiffness, and are coefficients.
Substituting Eq. (3) into Eq. (9), we obtained:
where:
Let , , Eq. (10) can also be shown as follows:
The Hamiltonian function of Eq. (19) can be shown as follows:
According to the quasi-nonintegrable Hamiltonian system theory, the Hamiltonian function converges weakly in probability to an one-dimensional Ito diffusion process. The averaged Ito equation about the Hamiltonian function can be shown as follows:
where is standard Wiener process, and are drift and diffusion coefficients of Ito stochastic process, which can be obtained in stochastic averaging method as follows:
where is the solution of the following equation:
Then the associated largest Lyapunov exponent of the system is:
Now the local stochastic stability of the system can be discussed as follows:
1) The trivial solution is locally asymptotic stable if and only if 0, which means the vibration amplitude of the system will tend to zero;
2) The trivial solution is locally asymptotic unstable if and only if 0, which means the vibration amplitude of the system will tend to be large;
3) Bifurcation should appear near the trivial solution if and only if 0, which means the vibration amplitude of the system will jump between the small value and the large value.
The largest Lyapunov exponent can only estimate the local stability. In this paper, the boundary classification method was used to analyze the global stability of the trivial solution of the system. Generally, the boundaries of diffusion process are singular, and the boundary classification is often determined by diffusion exponent, drift exponent and character value [12].
When we obtained that:, where is diffusion exponent, is drift exponent, is character value, is left boundary. Thus, the left boundary belongs to the first kind of singular boundary.
According to the classification for singular boundary, we obtained:
1) The left boundary is repulsively natural if 1;
2) The left boundary is strictly natural if 1;
3) The left boundary is attractively natural if 1.
When we obtained that: where is the right boundary. Thus, the right boundary belongs to the first kind of singular boundary. Thus, the right boundary is an entrance boundary.
The necessary and sufficient conditions for globally asymptotic stability of the trivial solution require that the left undary be attractively natural and the right boundary be entrance. Thus, the trivial solution is globally asymptotically stable if and only if 1, which means . The influence of the character value to the stability was shown in Fig. 4.
Fig. 4. The influence of the character value to the stability
The averaged FPK equation of Eq. (19) is:
where is probability density.
Thus, the stationary probability density function of the system is:
where is a normalization constant, .
The result of numerical simulation were shown in Fig. 5-8, where , , , , , , , , , , .
Fig. 5. The steady-state probability density of the system when and
Fig. 6. The joint probability density of the system when and
Fig. 7. The steady-state probability density of the system when and
Fig. 8. The joint probability density of the system when and
From Fig. 5-8, we can see that:
1) The hysteretic nonlinear damping coefficients () can induce stochastic Hopf bifurcation of the system. From Fig. 6 and Fig. 8, we can obviously see that there are two limit cycles in the stationary probability density, which means that there are two vibration amplitudes whose probability are both very high. Jumping phenomena between the two vibration amplitudes will appear when the conditions are changed;
2) The stationary probability density of the response of the system can be changed through adjusting the parameters (). It means that different PZT piezoelectric ceramics materials will cause different vibration amplitudes of the system since the parameters () are determined by PZT piezoelectric ceramics. It provide a way to improve the efficiency of the energy harvester since the stationary probability density of the big vibration amplitude can be increased by choosing appropriate PZT piezoelectric ceramics.
The experimental results of cantilevered piezoelectric energy harvester were shown in Fig. 9 and Fig. 10, where the vibration amplitude was shown as output voltage of sensor. We can see that system paremeters () can influence the vibration of the system, and jumping phenomena between the two vibration amplitudes appears when the conditions are changed.
Fig. 9. The response of cantilevered piezoelectric energy harvester when and
Fig. 10. The response of cantilevered piezoelectric energy harvester when 2 and 4.5
Stochastic bifurcation characteristics of cantilevered piezoelectric energy harvester had been studied in this paper. Von de Pol differencial item was introduced to interpret the hysteretic phenomena of piezoelectric ceramics, and then the nonlinear dynamic model of piezoelectric cantilever beam subjected to axial stochastic excitation was developed. The stochastic stability of the system was analyzed, and the steady-state probability density function and the joint probability density function of the dynamic response of the system were obtained, and then the conditions of stochastic Hopf bifurcation were analyzed. Numerical simulation shows that stochastic Hopf bifurcation appears when bifurcation parameter varies, which can increase vibration amplitude of cantilever beam system and improve the efficiency of piezoelectric energy harvester. Finally, the theoretical and numerical results were proved by experiments. The results of this paper are helpful to application of cantilevered piezoelectric energy harvester in engineering fields.
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) through grant No. 11272229 and 11302144, the Ph. D. Programs Foundation of Ministry of Education of China through grant No. 20120032120006, and Tianjin Research Program of Application Foundation and Advanced Technology through grant No. 13JCYBJC17900.