Analysis of intrinsic localised mode for a new energy harvesting cantilever array

¹ College of Engineering, Swansea University, Swansea, SA2 8PP, UK
² Wuhan University of Technology, 1040 Heping Road, Wuhan, 430063, P.R. China

^a e-mail: l.li@swansea.ac.uk

Received: 14 December 2013
Revised: 6 February 2014
Accepted: 27 February 2014
Published online: 1 April 2014

Abstract

Electromechanical model of an energy harvester that is comprised of 64 identical pairs of cantilever beams has been built in this work. Each pair consists of a short and a long cantilever with the same width and thickness. All the beams are bi-layer structures that include a piezoelectric layer and a substrate layer, which are coupled by the overhang part. The model is focused on analyzing the nonlinear dynamic behavior of the device, specifically when it is operated at intrinsic localized mode (ILM). The electrical charge generated on the surface of the piezoelectric layer has been derived using the beam theory and the piezoelectric equations. It has been found from numerical simulations that spatiotemporal chaos, in particular ILMs can arise during abrupt frequency changes of the external driving source, which could potentially be used to achieve high/concentrated energy output.