Piezoceramic patches for energy harvesting and sensing purposes

This paper deals with a design, modelling, simulation, and test of vibrating mechanical cantilever with bonded piezoelectric patches for energy harvesting and sensing purposes. An experimental flexible structure was designed and piezoceramic patches were placed originally as energy harvesting devices. Furthermore, additional sensing functionality of piezoceramic patches is investigated in this paper. Such piezoceramic patches are integrated in the cantilever design and they could represent, for example, smart layers of an advanced aircraft structure. The design and position of the piezoceramic patches were analysed in the ANSYS environment. The finite element model was used to predict output voltage and power for varied vibration modes. This proposed design of the cantilever with piezoceramic patches was tested in laboratory conditions, and voltage response for varied mechanical excitation was measured and analysed for both energy harvesting and sensing purposes. Proposed paper will also present an example of practical usage of the tested design for impact detection. It could be mainly used in structural monitoring systems or health and usage systems in aircraft applications