Study in circular auxetic structures for efficiency enhancement in piezoelectric vibration energy harvesting

Piezoelectric (PZT) components are one of the most popular elements in vibration sensing and also energy harvesting. They are very well established, cost effective and available in different geometries however there are still several challenges in their application particularly in vibration energy harvesting. They are normally narrow-band elements and work in high-frequency range. Their efficiency and power extraction density are also generally low compared with different electromagnetic techniques. Auxetic structures are proposed here to enhance efficiency of the piezoelectric circular patches in vibration energy harvesting. These kinds of patches namely PZT buzzers are inexpensive (less than 10 USD) elements and easily available. Two novel circular auxetic substrates are proposed to improve power extraction capacity of the conventional piezoelectric buzzers. Negative Poison’s ratio of the proposed meta-structure helps in efficiency enhancement. The concept is introduced, analyzed and verified through the finite element modeling and experimental testing. The idea is proved to work by comparing the harvested electrical power in the auxetic design against the conventional plain system. A parametric study is then carried out and effects of important electrical and geometrical parameters as well as the material property on the power extraction efficiency are assessed to arrive at optimum parameters. It is shown that by employing the auxetic design, a remarkable improvement in the harvested power is achievable. It is shown that for the two proposed auxetic designs, at the resonance frequency, we could reach to 10.2 and 13.3 magnification factor with respect to the plain energy harvester. Another important feature is that the resonant frequency in these new designs is very much lower than the conventional resonators. Results of this study can open a new path to application of inexpensive PZT buzzers in large-scale vibration energy harvesting.