Affiliations: [a] Department of Physics and Electronics, Hubei
University of Education, Wuhan, China | [b] China Ship Development and Design Center, Wuhan,
China | [c] Department of Electronic Science and Technology,
Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
Correspondence:
[*]
Corresponding author: Qingping Wang, Department of Physics and
Electronics, Hubei University of Education, Wuhan 430205, China. Tel.: +86
15392963907; E-mail: wqphust@gmail.com
Abstract: A finite model based on the classical laminated plate theory is
presented for the unimorph piezoelectric cantilever. The formulations of static
and dynamic analysis are derived from the variation principle. Three material
parameter matrices of the PZT are taken into account in the present model. The
static analysis of the piezoelectric cantilever is performed to investigate the
influence of the geometric parameters on the output voltage, and model analysis
is selected to determine the natural frequency and eigenmodes. To validate the
simulation results, an experiment on a unimorph cantilver with brass substrate
was carried out. The experiment results were found to be in good agreement with
the simulation results. The results indicate that the finite model can be
beneficial to designing ideal piezoelectric energy harvesting devices.
Keywords: Finite element model, piezoelectric cantilever, energy harvesting, open-circuit voltage
