Nonlinear modeling of MEMS piezoelectric energy harvesters

Abstract

This article presents the modeling of nonlinear response of micro piezoelectric energy harvesters under amplified base excitation. The micro transducer is a composite cantilever beam made of the PZT thick film deposited on the stainless-steel substrate. The model is developed based on the Euler-Bernoulli beam theory considering geometric and inertia nonlinearities, and the reduced formulation is derived based on the Hamiltonian variational principle. The harmonic balance method is used to simulate the nonlinear frequency response under various magnitudes of excitation and electric loads. The hardening type of nonlinearity is predicted and is found to be in good agreement with experiment. However, the softening response is also observed in different samples fabricated under different conditions. Such disagreement is under investigation.