Piezoelectric metastructures for simultaneous broadband energy harvesting and vibration suppression of traveling waves

Abstract: In this paper, we explore an electromechanical metastructure consisting of a periodic array of piezoelectric bimorphs with resistive-inductive loads for simultaneous harvesting and attenuation of traveling wave energy. We develop fully coupled analytical models, i.e., an electroelastic transfer matrix method, and exploit both locally-resonant and Bragg band gaps to achieve a multifunctional metastructure which is capable for maximum energy conversion and vibration mitigation in a broadband fashion. Our analytical and numerical results show that the proposed metastructure can achieve energy harvesting efficiency up to 95% at the local resonance frequency of 3.18 kHz, while reaching about 51% at 5.8 kHz near the upper limit of the Bragg band gap. The broadband vibration mitigation performance based on 50% power attenuation is predicted as 1.8 kHz and 1.1 kHz in the vicinity of the band gaps. The theoretical frameworks and the applicability of the proposed metastructure are validated using a full-scale experimental setup.