Coupled Vibration Suppression and Energy Harvesting System from Laminated Composite Structure

The demand for smart structures and smart devices has increased in the last decade. This is due to their wide range of applications in data collection, health monitoring, vibration controlling and energy harvesting. These applications can be accomplished by attaching sensors and actuators to the structures. Using conventional battery sources is a costly affair to power these sensors in terms of both financial and environmental aspects. Furthermore, the life and power of the battery sources drop quickly, which leads to a significant decrease in their efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Non-conventional energy sources like solar, thermal, wind and vibration energy can be used to overcome this problem. Among these, vibrational energy harvesting gained large attention due to its abundant availability in nature. Laminated composite structures are now used in wind turbines, automobiles, etc. In the present paper, vibrations from the laminated composite structure are to be minimized by piezoelectric surface actuators. The electromechanical equations of the vibration actuator with energy harvester system are solved and the vibration control, power harvester efficiency charts are illustrated.