Nonlinear metabeam for vibration absorption and energy harvesting

Resumo

Metamaterials are engineered materials that surpass conventional ones with their exceptional performance. These systems exhibit diverse properties, including excellent energy absorption, acoustic insulation, cloaking, negative Poisson's ratio, and more. In addition, they can possess the remarkable ability to serve multiple functions simultaneously, thereby achieving more than one objective. This study delves into the creation of a beam based on metamaterial engineered to attenuate vibrations while harvesting this kinetic energy for electricity generation. The system works by preventing elastic wave propagation along its length and focusing the incident wave into piezoelectric generators, responsible for the energy conversion. Consequently, we can use this energy to power microelectronic devices such as sensors and actuators. The proposed metabeam consists of a cantilever beam with nonlinear resonators equipped with piezoelectric layers. This arrangement establishes a wide local resonance bandgap on the frequency spectrum of the host beam forbidden the elastic wave propagation. The incident wave is transmitted to the resonators, where they convert kinetic energy into electricity. Nonlinearity is strategically introduced into the resonator to broaden the operational bandwidth. Mathematical modeling is developed, and numerical simulations are conducted to study and demonstrate the performance of the proposed system.