Experimental and Analytical Investigation of the Response of a Triboelectric Generator Under Different Operating Conditions

This article provides experimental and theoretical studies on the effect of operating conditions on the output response of triboelectric generators. The influence of specific parameters is examined in detail, including vibration frequency, impact separation distance, and the type of adhesive between the dielectric and the electrode for a single dielectric layer device operating in contact-separation mode, with Teflon and copper being the dielectric and electrode materials, respectively. A scotch-yoke mechanism is designed and fabricated in an effort to understand the effect of varying the operating conditions on the output voltage behavior. The voltage output is compared with an analytical capacitor model at drive frequencies ranging from 1 to 5 Hz and separation distances from 5 to 40 mm to evaluate the model's effectiveness in predicting generator output. The experimental results provide new insights into the behavior of triboelectric generators and how the type of adhesive between the dielectric material and the electrode affects the output signal.</p

Modeling of a symmetric five-bar displacement amplification compliant mechanism using energy methods

[abstract not available]https://fount.aucegypt.edu/faculty_book_chapters/1447/thumbnail.jp

Wind-driven pyroelectric energy harvesting device

Pyroelectric materials have recently received attention for harvesting waste heat owing to their potential to convert temperature fluctuations into useful electrical energy. One of the main challenges in designing pyroelectric energy harvesters is to provide a means to induce a temporal heat variation in a pyroelectric material autonomously from a steady heat source. To address this issue, we propose a new form of wind-driven pyroelectric energy harvester, in which a propeller is set in rotational motion by an incoming wind stream. The speed of the propeller's shaft is reduced by a gearbox to drive a slider-crank mechanism, in which a pyroelectric material is placed on the slider. Thermal cycling is obtained as the reciprocating slider moves the pyroelectric material across alternative hot and cold zones created by a stationary heat lamp and ambient temperature, respectively. The open-circuit voltage and closed-circuit current are investigated in the time domain at various wind speeds. The device was experimentally tested under wind speeds ranging from 1.1 to 1.6 m s-1 and charged an external 100 nF capacitor through a signal conditioning circuit to demonstrate its effectiveness for energy harvesting. Unlike conventional wind turbines, the energy harvested by the pyroelectric material is decoupled from the wind flow and no mechanical power is drawn from the transmission; hence the system can operate at low wind speeds (-1).</p

Energy harvesting from coupled bending-twisting oscillations in carbon-fibre reinforced polymer laminates

The energy harvesting capability of resonant harvesting structures, such as piezoelectric cantilever beams, can be improved by utilizing coupled oscillations that generate favourable strain mode distributions. In this work, we present the first demonstration of the use of a laminated carbon fibre reinforced polymer to create cantilever beams that undergo coupled bending-twisting oscillations for energy harvesting applications. Piezoelectric layers that operate in bending and shear mode are attached to the bend-twist coupled beam surface at locations of maximum bending and torsional strains in the first mode of vibration to fully exploit the strain distribution along the beam. Modelling of this new bend-twist harvesting system is presented, which compares favourably with experimental results. It is demonstrated that the variety of bend and torsional modes of the harvesters can be utilized to create a harvester that operates over a wider range of frequencies and such multi-modal device architectures provides a unique approach to tune the frequency response of resonant harvesting systems

A Novel Arch-Shaped Hybrid Composite Triboelectric Generator Using Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers

With the diminution of energy sources and the need for using cleaner energy, alternatives must be found. In addition, the desire to supply energy to autonomous low-power electronics has spurred interest in triboelectric materials. An arch-shaped hybrid carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composite triboelectric device is fabricated, which employs a curved upper copper electrode and a flat lower polyimide layer, both of which are combined with CFRP materials. This device can be used as a triboelectric energy harvesting source for self-powered sensors that can be combined with fiber reinforced composite-based structures. A voltage up to 300 mV is produced, which can charge a capacitor to 250 mV. The ability to combine triboelectric and CFRP materials provides a new approach to integrate energy harvesting into engineering structures and manufacture robust harvesting devices.</p

A New Chaotic System with Line of Equilibria: Dynamics, Passive Control and Circuit Design

A new chaotic system with line equilibrium is introduced in this paper. This system consists of five terms with two transcendental nonlinearities and two quadratic nonlinearities. Various tools of dynamical system such as phase portraits, Lyapunov exponents, Kaplan-Yorke dimension, bifurcation diagram and Poincarè map are used. It is interesting that this system has a line of fixed points and can display chaotic attractors. Next, this paper discusses control using passive control method. One example is given to insure the theoretical analysis. Finally, for the  new chaotic system, An electronic circuit for realizing the chaotic system has been implemented. The numerical simulation by using MATLAB 2010 and implementation of circuit simulations by using MultiSIM 10.0 have been performed in this study

Wind-driven pyroelectric energy harvesting device

Pyroelectric materials have recently received attention for harvesting waste heat owing to their potential to convert temperature fluctuations into useful electrical energy. One of the main challenges in designing pyroelectric energy harvesters is to provide a means to induce a temporal heat variation in a pyroelectric material autonomously from a steady heat source. To address this issue, we propose a new form of wind-driven pyroelectric energy harvester, in which a propeller is set in rotational motion by an incoming wind stream. The speed of the propeller's shaft is reduced by a gearbox to drive a slider-crank mechanism, in which a pyroelectric material is placed on the slider. Thermal cycling is obtained as the reciprocating slider moves the pyroelectric material across alternative hot and cold zones created by a stationary heat lamp and ambient temperature, respectively. The open-circuit voltage and closed-circuit current are investigated in the time domain at various wind speeds. The device was experimentally tested under wind speeds ranging from 1.1 to 1.6 m s−1 and charged an external 100 nF capacitor through a signal conditioning circuit to demonstrate its effectiveness for energy harvesting. Unlike conventional wind turbines, the energy harvested by the pyroelectric material is decoupled from the wind flow and no mechanical power is drawn from the transmission; hence the system can operate at low wind speeds (<2 m s−1)

Design of a self-tunable, variable-length pendulum for harvesting energy from rotational motion

In this paper, a self-tunable energy harvester based on pendulum oscillations with a mechanical motion rectifier (MMR) system, which can convert vibration into electrical energy, is proposed. The harvester is composed of a pendulum excited by a slider-crank mechanism. The pendulum system is designed to automatically adjust its own natural frequency to match that of the imposed base excitation. Frequency adjustment in a proposed pendulum-type energy harvester is achieved by varying the length of the pendulum rod through changing the position of pendulum mass which mounted at its tip. The pendulum mass is driven by a ball screw through a stepper motor which controls the length of the pendulum automatically in accordance with the frequency of the external motion. The base motion frequency is detected by an infrared sensor. An ultrasonic distance sensor is used to detect the length of the pendulum rod and feeds this information to a microcontroller to obtain the corresponding natural frequency from a lookup table. The microcontroller calculates the frequency difference between natural frequency and excitation frequency and converts this value into a length difference through another lookup table. The microcontroller then gives instructions to drive a stepper motor through a sequence of steps to achieve the target length and keeps the device in resonance state to harvest maximum power during operation. Different time detection intervals were studied to investigate their effect on the tuning process. This study showed that the longer time intervals increase the detection accuracy for the calculation of low excitation frequency. The amount of energy consumed during the tuning process to adjust the pendulum length is presented. In this context, the consumed energy is only needed until the resonance of the device matches the excitation frequency. The harvester system was studied numerically and experimentally. Based on the findings of this work, the natural frequency of the harvester is successfully tuned below 0.7 Hz, when the length of pendulum rod is changed from 550 mm to 900 mm, generating power from 1.78 W to 4.1 W at an optimal load resistance value of 10 Ω and 3 Ω respectively at maximum excitation amplitude of 120 mm. Therefore, the proposed pendulum system can be used as an efficient harvester for producing power in low-frequency applications (< 1 Hz)

Energy harvesting from coupled bending-twisting oscillations in carbon-fibre reinforced polymer laminates

The energy harvesting capability of resonant harvesting structures, such as piezoelectric cantilever beams, can be improved by utilizing coupled oscillations that generate favourable strain mode distributions. In this work, we present the first demonstration of the use of a laminated carbon fibre reinforced polymer to create cantilever beams that undergo coupled bending-twisting oscillations for energy harvesting applications. Piezoelectric layers that operate in bending and shear mode are attached to the bend-twist coupled beam surface at locations of maximum bending and torsional strains in the first mode of vibration to fully exploit the strain distribution along the beam. Modelling of this new bend-twist harvesting system is presented, which compares favourably with experimental results. It is demonstrated that the variety of bend and torsional modes of the harvesters can be utilized to create a harvester that operates over a wider range of frequencies and such multi-modal device architectures provides a unique approach to tune the frequency response of resonant harvesting systems

Linear Fractional Maps That Induce Compact Linear Operators

It is generally known that the difference of two composition operators formed by linear fractional self-maps of a ball cannot be nontrivially compactly contained in the Hardy space or any common weighted Bergman space. This study extends this finding in two important ways: Inducing maps are expanded to linear fractional maps that carry a ball into a second, and the difference is extended to generic linear combinations, potentially higher-dimensional space