Analysis of Cantilever Triple-Layer Piezoelectric Harvester (CTLPH): Non-Resonance Applications

In this research, a design guideline for a kinetic energy converter using a cantilever tri-ple-layer piezoelectric harvester (CTLPH) for low-frequency applications is presented. By combin-ing the constitutive and internal energy equations, the analytical equations for harvested voltage and power were developed. It was also found that frequency of motion, applied tip force, piezoe-lectric coefficients, geometrical dimensions, and mechanical properties of layers play significant roles in the performance of the harvester. Having characterised the voltage regulator module, LTC3588, the dependency of output voltage on both the storage and output capacitors of the LTC3588 was investigated. An experimental measurement using the optical method was carried out to determine the applied tip force. Furthermore, the performance of the CTLPH in low frequencies (< 3.3 Hz) for various resistive loads was investigated. It was found that both excitation frequency and external resistance load are effective on the maximum generated power. The developed CTLPH shows the optimum power of 17.3

Development of a Miniature and Low-Cost IoT-Based Remote Health Monitoring Device

The modern busy world is running behind new embedded technologies based on computers and software meanwhile some people are unable to monitor their health condition and regular medical check-ups. Some of them postpone medical check-ups due to a lack of time and convenience while others skip these regular evaluations and medical examinations due to huge medical bills and hospital expenses. In this research, we present a device in the telemonitoring system capable of monitoring, checking, and evaluating the health status of the human body remotely through the internet for the needs of all kinds of people. The remote health monitoring device is a microcontroller-based embedded unit. The various types of sensors in this device are connected to the human body, and with the help of an Arduino UNO board, the required analogue data are collected from the sensors. The microcontroller on the Arduino board processes the analogue data collected in this way into digital data and transfers that information to the cloud and stores it there; the processed digital data are then instantly displayed through the LCD attached to the machine. By accessing the cloud storage with a username and password, the concerned person’s health care teams/doctors, and other health staff can collect these data for the assessment and follow-up of that patient. Besides that, the family members/guardians can use and evaluate these data for awareness of the patient's current health status. Moreover, the system is connected to a GPS module. In emergencies, the concerned team can be positioning the patient or the person with this device. The setup continuously evaluates and transfers the data to the cloud and also the user can prefix a normal value range for the evaluation. For example, the blood pressure normal value is universally prefixed between 80/120 mmHg. Similarly, the Remote Health Monitoring System (RHMS) is also allowed to fix the range of values referred to as normal coefficients. This IoT-based miniature system 11×10×10 cm3 with a low weight of 500 gr only consumes 10 mW. This smart monitoring system is manufactured for 100 GBP (British Pound Sterling), and can facilitate the communication between patients and health systems, but also it can be employed for numerous other uses including communication sectors in the aerospace and transportation systems

A New Active Anti-Vibration System Using a Magnetostrictive Bimetal Actuator

This paper introduces a new vibration reduction system using a magnetostrictive (Fe-Ga alloy) bimetal actuator. The proposed method (i) uses a magnetostrictive bimetal actuator instead of prevalent single material ones that need an auxiliary temperature control system and (ii) utilises a novel disturbance rejection control scheme that eliminates an unknown disturbance, without needing knowledge of its dynamics. In experiments, the vibration source is demonstrated as an unbalanced motor attached to the tip of a cantilever beam, resembling a beam-like element subject to ambiance vibrations. In the first step, the fundamental of this anti-vibration system is introduced and described. Then, analytical and data-driven modelling for the combination of the beam, the motor, and the bimetal is reported. These follow by model validation and impulse response analysis. Then, the proposed control system is introduced in detail. Experimental results indicate that the control system results in 33.6% decrease in beam vibration amplitude. Furthermore, the presented method in this paper can be employed as a design guideline for future applications

Charge Estimation of Piezoelectric Actuators: A Comparative Study

This article first reviews the position control of piezoelectric actuators, particularly charge-based sensorless control systems, which often include a charge estimator as a key component. The rest of the paper is about charge estimators for piezoelectric actuators. Two of the most recent/effective types of these estimators utilise either a sensing capacitor (type I in this paper) or a sensing resistor (type II); the latter (and the newer) type is broadly known as a digital charge estimator. Some experimental results in the literature show that, with the same loss in excitation voltage, a considerably higher amount of charge can be estimated with a type II estimator in comparison with a type I estimator; therefore, the superiority of type II estimators was acknowledged. In order to re-assess this conclusion, this paper equitably compares type I and II estimators through analytical modelling and experimentation. The results indicate that type II estimators have only a slight advantage in estimating higher amounts of charge, if both type I and II estimators are designed appropriately. At the same time, type II estimators have disadvantages; e.g., the resistance of type II estimators has to be tuned to suit different excitation frequencies. This research concludes that capacitor-based (type I) charge estimators for piezoelectric actuators, with pertinent design and implementation, can be still the prime solution for many charge estimation problems despite claims in the literature in the last decade

Fuzzy Analysis of Resonance Frequencies for Structural Inspection of an Engine Cylinder Block

Summary: A new inspection technique for complex mechanical structures is proposed in this paper, where a fuzzy inference system carries out structural inspection. The inputs to the fuzzy inference system are the elements of a fault signature, an array of numbers prepared with use of below 5 kHz resonance frequencies of faultless and a number of faulty specimens. Advantage: Below 5 kHz resonance frequencies are easier and less expensive to obtain compared to higher frequency ones. Limit: Due to high expenses of experiments, reliable finite element models were alternatively used to obtain resonance frequencies of the faulty specimens. Results: The developed fuzzy inference system in this research accurately located an under-surface fault in an engine cylinder block

Modelling of Engineering Systems with Small Data, a Comparative Study

This chapter equitably compares five different Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques for data-driven modelling. All these techniques were used to solve two real-world engineering data-driven modelling problems with small number of experimental data samples, one with sparse and one with dense data. The models of both problems are shown to be highly nonlinear. In the problem with available dense data, Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) evidently outperforms other AI models and challenges the claims in the literature about superiority of Fully Connected Cascade (FCC). However, the results of the problem with sparse data shows superiority of FCC, closely followed by MLP and neuro-fuzzy network