Performance Analysis for a Wave Energy Harvester of Piezoelectric Cantilever Beam.

Liu, M.; Liu, H.; Chen, H.; Chai, Y., and Wang, L., 2018. Performance analysis for a wave energy harvester of piezoelectric cantilever beam. In: Liu, Z.L. and Mi, C. (eds.), Advances in Sustainable Port and Ocean Engineering. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 83, pp. 976–984. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. In this paper, we present a convenient and economical wave energy harvester that consists of a large piezoelectric cantilever beam and a floating vertical axisymmetric buoy. A spring-mass-damper system is applied to simulate the heaving motion of a wave energy harvester and semi-analytical solutions based on the eigen-function are used to analysis hydrodynamic characteristics of buoy under potential flow theory. The numerical results show the influences of the different lumped and structural parameters for the energy harvesting efficiency. Theoretical analysis and numerical calculation reveal this kind of the wave energy harvester can provide adequate power for the large cantilever beam structure due to the heaving motion of buoy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]