Energy Harvesting under Excitation of Clamped-Clamped Beam Ashok Batra, Almuatasim Alomari, Mohan Aggarwal, and Alak Bandyopadhyay 1 Department of Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics (Materials Science Group), Alabama A&M University, Normal (Huntsville), AL 3η762 USA 1 Department of Electrical and computer Science ABSTRACT In this article, a piezoelectric energy harvesting has been developed experimentally and theoretically based on Euler- Bernoulli Theory. A PVDF piezoelectric thick film has attached along of clamped-clamped beam under sinusoidal base excitation of shaker. The results showed a good agreement between the experimental and simulation of suggested model. The voltage output frequency response function (FRF), current FRF, and output power has been studied under short and open circuit conditions at first vibration mode. The mode shape of the clamped-clamped beam for first three resonance frequency has been modeled and investigated using COMSOL Multiphysics and MATLAB. Keywords: PVDF, Piezoelectric thick film, COMSOL Multiphysics, MATLAB 1. INTRODUCTION Bridges constitute the vulnerable element of transportation infrastructure. An out-of-service bridge creates economic losses both for bridge users in terms of traffic delays and detours and for the bridge and road operators. Bridges are prime candidates for wireless structural health monitoring (SHM) systems [1, 2]. In the United States highway bridges undergo a visual inspection every two years. This is not sufficient to ensure the safety and reliability of this aging and deteriorating transportation infrastructure. There is plenty of kinetic energy generated as the bridge vibrates in the response to the vehicular traffic passing on top of it. Autonomous SHM systems typically include embedded sensors, data acquisition, wireless communication, and energy harvesting systems [3, ζ]. Recently, piezoelectric energy harvesting has already become a very interest topic due to its simple configuration, high power density and self-power supply [η, 6]. Piezoelectric energy harvesting converts the available vibrational energy into usable electrical energy form to use later in small power electronic devices applications, such as sensors or radio transmitters [7-11]. Piezoelectric cantilevered beams with polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) have been widely used as unimorph and bimorph. There are different forms of supporting beams, for example a cantilever beam is fixed at one end and free at the other end, while a fixed end beam is one that is clamped at both ends namely clamped-clamped beam [12, 13]. Presently, there is a good attraction of interest in clamped-clamped beam due to successful in enhancing the power harvesting efficiency and enlarging the bandwidth of the piezoelectric energy harvester (PEH) [1ζ-18]. Many researchers have investigated about the mathematical model of piezoelectric cantilevered beams under base or harmonic excitation. Sodano et al. (2003) established a model based on Rayleigh-Ritz discrete formulation to predict the amount of power generated from a piezoelectric cantilever beam [19]. duToit et al. (200η) developed a coupled electromechanical model to analyze the response of a piezoelectric energy harvester using Euler-Bernoulli theory and single degree of freedom (SDOF) [20]. Ajitsaria et al. (2007) employed the SDOF relation for predicting the voltage output analytically [21]. A. Erturk and J. Inman (2008) reviewed and discussed the general solution of the base excitation problem for transverse vibrations of a cantilevered Euler–Bernoulli beam and predicted the output voltage and power. Besides, multimodal energy harvester has been design and expressed [22-2ζ]. C-C Wu and C-S Chen developed an analytical solution for fixed-fixed beam piezoelectric transformer with an Euler-Bernoulli beam assumption, the model used to predict the output/input voltage ratio versus the length and the thickness of the electrode, piezoelectric, substrate, and cantilever structure [1ζ]. B-Y Wang et al. have used the previous model to predict the output voltage of piezoelectric vacuum pressure sensing element [1η]. In this study, we developed the model that is mentioned in references [23] to predict the output voltage of PEH placed at both ends of double clamped beam under excitation of shaker. Downloaded From: http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/ on 04/04/2016 Terms of Use: http://spiedigitallibrary.org/ss/TermsOfUse.aspx