Mechanical Metamaterials Gyro-Structure Piezoelectric Nanogenerators for Energy Harvesting under Quasi-Static Excitations in Ocean Engineering

Pengcheng Jiao; Yang Yang; KingJames Idala Egbe; Zhiguo He; Yingtien Lin

doi:10.1021/acsomega.1c01687

Mechanical Metamaterials Gyro-Structure Piezoelectric Nanogenerators for Energy Harvesting under Quasi-Static Excitations in Ocean Engineering

ACS Omega. 2021 May 28;6(23):15348-15360. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.1c01687. eCollection 2021 Jun 15.

Authors

Pengcheng Jiao^{1

2

3}, Yang Yang², KingJames Idala Egbe², Zhiguo He^{1

2

3}, Yingtien Lin^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Hainan Institute of Zhejiang University, Sanya 572025, Hainan, China.
² Institute of Port, Coastal and Offshore Engineering, Ocean College, Zhejiang University, Zhoushan 3216021, Zhejiang, China.
³ Engineering Research Center of Oceanic Sensing Technology and Equipment, Ministry of Education, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310000, Zhejiang, China.

Abstract

In this study, we develop the mechanical metamaterial-enabled piezoelectric nanogenerators in the gyro-structure, which is reported as a novel green energy solution to generate electrical power under quasi-static excitations (i.e., <1 Hz) such as in the ocean environment. The plate-like mechanical metamaterials are designed with a hexagonal corrugation to improve their mechanical characteristics (i.e., effective bending stiffnesses), and the piezoelectric trips are bonded to the metaplates. The piezo-metaplates are placed in the sliding cells to obtain the post-buckling response for energy harvesting under low-frequency ocean motions. The corrugated mechanical metamaterials are fabricated using the three-dimensional additive manufacturing technique and are bonded with polyvinylidene fluoride strips, and the nanogenerator samples are investigated under the quasi-static loading. Theoretical and numerical models are developed to obtain the electrical power, and satisfactory agreements are observed. Optimization is conducted to maximize the generated electrical power with respect to the geometric consideration (i.e., changing the corrugation pattern of the mechanical metamaterials) and the material consideration (i.e., changing the mechanical metamaterials to anisotropic). In the end, we consider the piezoelectric nanogenerators as a potential green solution for the energy issues in other fields.