With concerns about climate change looming, scientists and researchers have begun investigating various renewable energy methods that utilize everything the Earth has to offer. In particular, significant resources have been invested into piezoelectric energy harvester (PEH) technologies to harness the various oscillatory behaviors commonly found in the environment. While many of these systems are novel, they face significant challenges in practical application due to their reliance on complex theoretical models and their current operation at the microscopic scale, which results in negligible power production. This raises the question of whether it is feasible and practical to scale these models to the size of everyday objects in order to generate meaningful power. To generate this power, this thesis employs a piezoelectric beam--buoy system driven by ocean waves. Ocean waves are chosen because of their large amplitudes and low-frequency behavior, allowing them to readily transfer their inertia into the system. To capture this power, a large, fixed-end, uniform composite piezoelectric beam was designed and constructed using a novel lamination technique, deflected transversely by a buoy. To maximize efficiency, the system is simulated and optimized in a MATLAB design space environment, taking into account the system's dimensions, buoyant loads, and material properties. This thesis demonstrates that significant power can be generated from such laminated piezoelectric beams, ranging from a few microwatts to several watts under appropriate ocean-wave conditions. Further optimization using improved materials and manufacturing methods may open new opportunities for the implementation of large-scale ocean energy production. Moreover, the theoretical and manufacturing models developed in this work can be applied to similar PEH designs, as real-world energy harvesting typically utilizes low-frequency oscillations.
Kai Nissimov (Thu,) studied this question.