Thesis (M. S.)--Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2004. / Smith, Marc K., Committee Chair ; Glezer, Ari, Committee Member ; Ghiaasiaan, S. Mostafa, Committee Member. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available in electronic version.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 2008. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 123-125). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:27:13Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2012-12-14Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T20:16:16Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 camara_fho_me_ilha.pdf: 1061097 bytes, checksum: dd65d1481cdc65c74077f24ca53e3b77 (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / A utilização de materiais piezelétricos para transformação de energia mecânica proveniente das vibrações em energia elétrica tem aumentado na última década para tentar suprir a necessidade por fontes alternativas de energia na alimentação de sistemas de monitoramento da condição estrutural (SHM) e dispositivos de aeronaves não tripuladas, tornando estes dispositivos autônomos. Como a energia produzida através da piezoestrutura não é suficiente para alimentar os dispositivos eletrônicos diretamente, técnicas de extração e armazenamento são utilizadas para que a energia produzida seja acumulada até um nível utilizável. Neste sentido, este trabalho apresenta um estudo sobre uma configuração de piezoestrutura capaz de produzir um alto nível de energia mesmo que a frequência de excitação apresente variações. A piezoestrutura proposta é do tipo multifrequência aumentando a largura de banda de operação e podendo produzir um alto nível de energia mesmo que a frequência de excitação apresente alterações. A piezoestrutura multifrequência foi modelada por elementos finitos através do programa ANSYS© e posteriormente comparada com resultados experimentais. Em seguida, a tensão produzida foi extraída através dos circuitos retificador de onda completa em ponte e do dobrador de tensão buscando avaliar o desempenho de ambos na extração da energia produzida para armazenamento em um supercapacitor. Finalmente, a energia armazenada no supercapacitor foi utilizada para alimentar um sistema de monitoramento da temperatura de um ambiente de modo que o sistema passe a operar como um sistema autônomo / The use of piezoelectric materials to transform mechanical energy from the vibrations into electrical energy has increased in the last decade trying to meet the need for alternative sources of energy to power up SHM systems and Unmanned Air Vehicle devices, making these standalone devices. This work presents a study on a configuration of a piezostructure being able to produce a higher energy even if the excitation frequency undergoes changes, and then evaluate two electronic circuit topology as simple interface for extracting the maximum energy produced and store it in a supercapacitor to power a sensor system that monitors the temperature in a room. Initially a brief review of the basics and fundamentals of energy harvesting was presented for better understanding of the development of this work. The proposal is a multifrequency piezostructure type that increases the bandwidth of operation and could produce a high energy value even if the excitation frequency undergoes alterations. The multifrequency piezostructure was modeled by finite element software ANSYS© and then compared with experimental results showing a good correlation between the numerical and experimental models. Then, a parametric study was conducted to determine which geometric parameter from the piezostruture should be varied so that the piezo-beams had their natural frequencies within the specified operating range. The voltage produced was extracted through two types of circuits (full wave rectifier and voltage doubler) trying to evaluate which one is able to extract the maximum possible energy produced for storage in a supercapacitor. Finally, the energy stored in the supercapacitor was used to power a system for monitoring the temperature of an environment so that the system operates as a standalone system

Orientador: João Antônio Pereira / Banca: Samuel da Silva / Banca: Adailton Silva Borges / Resumo: A utilização de materiais piezelétricos para transformação de energia mecânica proveniente das vibrações em energia elétrica tem aumentado na última década para tentar suprir a necessidade por fontes alternativas de energia na alimentação de sistemas de monitoramento da condição estrutural (SHM) e dispositivos de aeronaves não tripuladas, tornando estes dispositivos autônomos. Como a energia produzida através da piezoestrutura não é suficiente para alimentar os dispositivos eletrônicos diretamente, técnicas de extração e armazenamento são utilizadas para que a energia produzida seja acumulada até um nível utilizável. Neste sentido, este trabalho apresenta um estudo sobre uma configuração de piezoestrutura capaz de produzir um alto nível de energia mesmo que a frequência de excitação apresente variações. A piezoestrutura proposta é do tipo multifrequência aumentando a largura de banda de operação e podendo produzir um alto nível de energia mesmo que a frequência de excitação apresente alterações. A piezoestrutura multifrequência foi modelada por elementos finitos através do programa ANSYS© e posteriormente comparada com resultados experimentais. Em seguida, a tensão produzida foi extraída através dos circuitos retificador de onda completa em ponte e do dobrador de tensão buscando avaliar o desempenho de ambos na extração da energia produzida para armazenamento em um supercapacitor. Finalmente, a energia armazenada no supercapacitor foi utilizada para alimentar um sistema de monitoramento da temperatura de um ambiente de modo que o sistema passe a operar como um sistema autônomo / Abstract: The use of piezoelectric materials to transform mechanical energy from the vibrations into electrical energy has increased in the last decade trying to meet the need for alternative sources of energy to power up SHM systems and Unmanned Air Vehicle devices, making these standalone devices. This work presents a study on a configuration of a piezostructure being able to produce a higher energy even if the excitation frequency undergoes changes, and then evaluate two electronic circuit topology as simple interface for extracting the maximum energy produced and store it in a supercapacitor to power a sensor system that monitors the temperature in a room. Initially a brief review of the basics and fundamentals of energy harvesting was presented for better understanding of the development of this work. The proposal is a multifrequency piezostructure type that increases the bandwidth of operation and could produce a high energy value even if the excitation frequency undergoes alterations. The multifrequency piezostructure was modeled by finite element software ANSYS© and then compared with experimental results showing a good correlation between the numerical and experimental models. Then, a parametric study was conducted to determine which geometric parameter from the piezostruture should be varied so that the piezo-beams had their natural frequencies within the specified operating range. The voltage produced was extracted through two types of circuits (full wave rectifier and voltage doubler) trying to evaluate which one is able to extract the maximum possible energy produced for storage in a supercapacitor. Finally, the energy stored in the supercapacitor was used to power a system for monitoring the temperature of an environment so that the system operates as a standalone system / Mestre

The purpose of this research is to test a unique implementation of active feedback applied to a low frequency piezoelectric transducer. Understanding that active feedback can be used to shape the frequency response of an electrical system a method for applying active electroacoustical feedback will be used to obtain a wider acoustical bandwidth in a piezoelectric transmitter. By applying active feedback to a resonant device its bandwidth was increased by a factor of 2.5. This is a significant improvement for applications where minimum electrical phase shift versus frequency is desired.

Vibratory gyroscopes are inertial sensors, used to measure rotation rates in a number of applications. The performance of these sensors is limited by imperfections that occur during manufacture of the resonators. The effects of resonator imperfections, in piezoelectric vibratory gyroscopes, were studied. Hamilton's principle and the Rayleigh-Ritz method provided an effective approach for modeling the coupled electromechanical dynamics of piezoelectric resonators. This method produced accurate results when applied to an imperfect piezoelectric vibrating cylinder gyroscope. The effects of elastic boundary conditions, on the dynamics of rotating thin-walled cylinders, were analyzed by an exact solution of the Flügge shell theory equations of motion. A range of stiffnesses in which the cylinder dynamics was sensitive to boundary stiffness variations was established. The support structure, of a cylinder used in a vibratory gyroscope, should be designed to have stiffness outside of this range. Variations in the piezoelectric material properties were investigated. A figure-of- merit was proposed which could be used to select an existing piezoceramic material or to optimize a new composition for use in vibratory gyroscopes. The effects of displacement and velocity feedback on the resonator dynamics were analyzed. It was shown that displacement feedback could be used to eliminate the natural frequency errors, that occur during manufacture, of a typical piezoelectric vibrating cylinder gyroscope. The problem of designing the control system to reduce the effects of resonator imperfections was investigated. Averaged equations of motion, for a general resonator, were presented. These equations provided useful insight into the dynamics of the imperfect resonator and were used to motivate the control system functions. Two control schemes were investigated numerically and experimentally. It was shown that it is possible to completely suppress the first-order effects of resonator mass/stiffness imperfections. Damping imperfections, are not compensated by the control system and are believed to be the major source of residual error. Experiments performed on a piezoelectric vibrating cylinder gyroscope showed an order of magnitude improvement, in the zero-rate offset variation over a temperature range of 60°C, when the control systems were implemented. / Ph. D.

Since the turn of the millennium, giant magnetoelectric (ME) effects have been found in laminated composites of piezoelectric and magnetostrictive layers. Compared to ME single phase and two phase particulate composites, laminated composites have much higher ME coefficients and are also readily fabricated. In this thesis, I have investigated ME effect in laminated composites including materials, structures, fundamental properties and devices. Giant permeability Metglas was incorporated in ME laminates. The piezomagnetic coefficient of the Metglas is larger than that of widely used magnetostrictive materials, such as Terfenol-D or nickel ferrite. The experimental results show that Metglas based ME laminates have giant ME voltage coefficients and small required DC magnetic biases. Besides, the laminates have a good directional dependence of the magnetic field: it can only sense the magnetic field along its longitudinal direction. Symmetric bimorph and differential mode magnetoelectric laminates have been designed to reject (decrease) thermal and vibration noise sources, respectively. The mechanism for the noise cancellation capability is that the laminate operates in a bending (or longitudinal) mode, whereas the noise is contained in the other mode. The ME susceptibility (α_me) is the fundamental property that describes the coupling between the polarization and magnetization of a ME media. It is a complex quantity ( ). I discuss the relationship of the ME susceptibility between the magnetic permeability, dielectric permittivity of the materials, and the widely used ME voltage coefficient. The shape of the magnetic layer has a large impact on the giant permeability due to shape demagnetization effects. A long, thin and narrow shape increases the ME voltage coefficient and decreases the required optimum DC bias. The resonance frequency of Terfenol-D/PZT laminates can be continuously tuned by magnetic field over a wide range. This large tunability is due to the large magnetostriction of Terfenol-D. It results in a dramatic increase in the bandwidth over which devices might take advantage of the resonance enhanced ME coefficient. Four device applications have also been studied based on the giant ME effect of laminate composites. (i) ME laminates offer much potential for low-frequency (10⁻² to 10³ Hz) detection of minute magnetic fields (10^-12Tesla or below) in a passive mode of operation. With a wrapped active coil, the Metglas/PZT laminates are also capable of detecting changes of 0.8 nano-Tesla in DC magnetic fields without an applied DC bias. (ii) A geomagnetic field sensor is shown to have high sensitivity to variations in Earth's field of H_DC=0.8nano-Tesla. It could offer potential applications in global positioning. (iii) Under electro-mechanical resonance drive conditions, ME laminates have been shown to have a high gyration effect. These findings indicate the potential existence of a fifth fundamental network element. (iv) A multimodal system has been developed for simultaneously harvesting mechanical vibration and magnetic energies. / Ph. D.

Piezoelectric ceramics are characterized as smart materials and have been widely used in the area of actuators and sensors. The principle operation of a piezoelectric transformer (PT) is a combined function of actuators and sensors so that energy can be transformed from electrical form to electrical form via mechanical vibration. Since PTs behave as band-pass filters, it is particularly important to control their gains as transformers and to operate them efficiently as power-transferring components. In order to incorporate a PT into amplifier design and to match it to the linear or nonlinear loads, suitable electrical equivalent circuits are required for the frequency range of interest. The study of the accuracy of PT models is carried out and verified from several points of view, including input impedance, voltage gain, and efficiency. From the characteristics of the PTs, it follows that the efficiency of the PTs is a strong function of load and frequency. Because of the big intrinsic capacitors, adding inductive loads to the PTs is essential to obtain a satisfactory efficiency for the PTs and amplifiers. Power-flow method is studied and modified to obtain the maximum efficiency of the converter. The algorithm for designing a PT converter or inverter is to calculate the optimal load termination, YOPT, of the PT first so that the efficiency (power gain) of the PT is maximized. And then the efficiency of the dc/ac inverter is optimized according to the input impedance, ZIN, of the PT with an optimal load termination. Because the PTs are low-power devices, the general requirements for the applications of the PTs include low-power, low cost, and high efficiency. It is important to reduce the number of inductive components and switches in amplifier or dc/ac inverter designs for PT applications. High-voltage piezoelectric transformers have been adopted by power electronic engineers and researchers worldwide. A complete inverter with HVPT for CCFL or neon lamps was built, and the experimental results are presented. However, design issues such as packaging, thermal effects, amplifier circuits, control methods, and matching between amplifiers and loads need to be explored further. / Ph. D.

Dielectrics are materials that can be polarized by an applied electric field. As the essential property for dielectrics, the relationship between electric field and dielectric polarization, has been widely studied and used in the area of electrical engineering. Representative applications are insulators and electrical energy storage capacitors. For some types of dielectrics, the dielectric polarization is not only decided by the applied electric field, but also is affected by mechanical and thermal properties. This work studies the electro-mechanical and electro-thermal energy inter-conversions and proposes the design of power converters for these materials. Piezoelectric effect is a cross-coupling between mechanical property and electrical property of dielectrics. It is a reversible process where external electric potential can generate internal mechanical force while external mechanical force can also generate internal electric potential. This effect is utilized to build a piezoelectric transformer (PT) by combining two sets of piezoelectric material together. One set is used as the input, to cause a geometric strain by applied electric field, while the other set is used as the output, to generate an electric charge by the coupled mechanical stress. Compared to traditional magnetic transformers, PTs store energy in mechanical inertia and compliance and therefore they do not generate electromagnetic noise. They are suitable for batch mass manufacturing since there is no winding requirement. Among many types of PTs, radial PT and Rosen-type PT are most widely used. To provide a guide for the design of PT-based converters, the electrical characteristics of PTs are first analyzed. The accuracy and applicability of different levels of models of PTs are compared and discussed. The detailed universal attributes of PTs, which include the gain characteristic, the input impedance characteristic and the efficiency characteristic, are also derived. In addition, with the assistance of additional compensation component(s), PTs can provide better performance. The impacts of the input and output inductors and capacitors on gain and efficiency characteristics of a PT are analyzed. Tunable PT is a recently developed raidal PT with three ports: input, output, and control ports. When connected with different impedance at the control port, tunable PT has different voltage gain characteristics. It is proposed to use this property for output voltage regulation while keeping constant switching frequency to ensure high efficiency operation of the PT in PT-based power converters. A closed-loop control scheme is proposed, where the regulation is done by a duty cycle controlled switched capacitor at the tunable PT control port. Two types of output filter are also analyzed and compared. Dc-dc converters with power rating ranging from 30 W to 100 W are built to verify the proposed design. Rosen-type PT features natural mechanisms for high transform ratio in a compact planar form, which provide an alternative solution for dc bus-fed high step-down voltage-ratio auxiliary power supplies in medium-/high-voltage systems without using bulky magnetic transformer with high turns numbers. The design procedure of the Rosen-type PT-based high step-down voltage-ratio dc-dc converter is presented. The proposed design is validated by a prototype with height of 1 cm, whose nominal output power is 5 W, input voltage ranges from 200 V to 1.5 kV, regulated output voltage is 5 V. Pyroelectric effect is a cross-coupling between thermal property and electrical property in some dielectrics. It is also reversible. The pyroelectric effect refers to the polarization change caused by temperature change, while the reversed pyroelectric effect refers to a temperature change generated by a electric field change. The reversed pyroelectric effect can be used for building a environmentally friendly thermodynamic system. Electrical characterization of the pyroelectric material is executed to facilitate the design of the power converter needed in the corresponding thermodynamic system. Specifically, this work proposes an energy recovery circuit to increase the coefficient of performance of the system since during the thermodynamic cycle, part of the electrical driving work does not pump heat and may therefore be recovered. / Doctor of Philosophy / When a dielectric material is placed in an electric field, electric charges slightly shift from their average equilibrium positions, causing dielectric polarization. In the area of electromagnetism, dielectric material is widely used as an electrical insulator and to build capacitors. For some types of dielectrics, dielectric polarization is not only affected by electric field. Strong couplings between electrical and mechanical characteristics, and between electrical and thermal characteristic also exist and can be utilized in practical applications. Piezoelectric effect is a coupling between electrical and mechanical characteristics. It is a reversible process where external electric potential can generate internal mechanical force and vice versa. It can be utilized to build transformers, which do not require coil winding nor generate electromagnetic interference compared to their magnetic counterparts. This work analyzed the electrical characteristics of piezoelectric transformers and proposed the design of dc-dc converters based on different types of piezoelectric transformers for different applications, which include tunable radial piezoelectric transformer-based power converters and Rosen-type piezoelectric transformer-based step-down converter with high voltage conversion ratio. (Reversed) pyroelectric effect is a coupling between electrical and thermal characteristics in some dielectrics. An adiabatically applied or removal electric field results in an increase or decrease in the temperature of the corresponding material. This effect can be used to build a environmentally friendly thermodynamic system instead of the most prevalent vapor compression method which involves the use of hydro-fluorocarbon gases leading to global warming and ozone depletion. Electrical characterization is executed first to facilitate the design of the power converter needed by the thermodynamic system. In addition, during the thermal cycle, part of the work done to drive representative cycles does not pump heat and may therefore be recovered. This work proposed circuit featuring energy recovery to provide the desired electric field for driving the thermodynamic system and charge recycling to improve the system efficiency.