Renewable Energy 50 (2013) 977e987

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Renewable Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/renene

Parametrically excited nonlinear piezoelectric compact wind turbine

M. Amin Karami a, *, Justin R. Farmer b, Daniel J. Inman a
a
Department of Aerospace Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
b
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg VA, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: A nonlinear piezoelectric rotary transducer is developed that makes compact low speed wind generators
Received 10 April 2012 realizable. Compact wind generators provide power to sensor nodes in remote or hard to reach locations.
Accepted 26 July 2012 Since the locations of the sensor nodes are not optimized in terms of wind speed, the compact wind
Available online 20 September 2012
generators should be able to produce power from low speed wind. At smaller scales piezoelectric
transduction becomes more effective than electromagnetic transduction. Therefore one way of realizing
Keywords:
the compact wind turbines is by replacing the electromagnetic generator with a piezoelectric transducer.
Wind generator
This work presents a novel piezoelectric transducer where the rotation of the blades results in large
Piezoelectric
Low speed wind
oscillations of piezoelectric beams. The piezoelectric bimorphs are made bi-stable by incorporation of
Compact repelling magnetic force. The Magnetic force is due to interaction of permanent magnets at the tip of the
Nonlinear beams with permanent magnets rotating with the blades. Since the magnetic force changes with blade
Energy harvesting rotation, the dynamics of the beams changes in time and the system is thus parametrically excited. Two
congurations are presented one called tangential conguration and the other is radial conguration. An
80 mm
80 mm
175 mm nonlinear piezoelectric wind generator can generate milliwatts of power
from wind as slow as 2 ms1. The proposed compact wind generators are experimentally investigated in
two steps. First the piezoelectric transducer is examined through constant rotational speed tests. Second
wind tunnel experiments are performed to characterize the entire wind generator. An analytical model is
developed for the piezoelectric rotational transducer. The model is veried with the experimental
results. The nonlinear phenomena captured by the experimental investigations are explained using the
analytical model. The model is also used for more case studies identifying specically the effect of
parametric excitations.
2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Introduction
Wind energy can be used to power the sensor nodes in hard to
reach locations. The generator should be compact to match the
small size of the sensor nodes. At the same time, the wind gener-
ators should be robust and they should be able to generate power
from low speed winds. Otherwise the power generation issue
prevents optimal placement of the sensor nodes and thus
compromises the main monitoring objective. The two mentioned
criteria are unique to on the spot wind power generators. The focus
of traditional wind power generation is on extra large wind
turbines which can produce mega watts of power from strong
winds [1]. The development of small size wind energy harvesters
has lately been under attention. The devices can be categorized into
two different groups: the devices in which the transduction
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: karami@umich.edu (M.A. Karami), jufarmer@vt.edu
(J.R. Farmer), daninman@umich.edu (D.J. Inman).
elements directly interact with wind [2e6], and the harvesters that
utilize blades. The majority of the small size bladed wind turbines
use electromagnetic generators to convert mechanical energy of
the blades to electrical energy [7e11]. Since the rotation speeds of
the blades are typically small, a gearbox is required in those devices
to operate the electric generator at its optimal speed. The internal
friction in the gearbox prevents the rotation of the blades in
response to low speed wind. The small scale wind turbines that use
conventional electric generators therefore, fail to produce power
from low speed wind and gusts.
At smaller scales piezoelectric transduction becomes more
efcient than electromagnetic transduction [12]. Piezoelectric
beams have been utilized in some of the small scale wind
harvesters. In Refs. [13,14] small wedges, called exciter teeth, are
connected to the rotor. The piezoelectric beams are mounted to the
stator. The exciter teeth bend the beams and suddenly release them
and cause the beams to generate energy through free vibrations.
The slight impact between the beams and the exciter teeth dissi-
pates some amounts of energy and also gradually damages the

0960-1481/$ e see front matter 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2012.07.037
978 M.A. Karami et al. / Renewable Energy 50 (2013) 977e987
piezoceramics. Bressers et al. developed a contactless wind gener-
ator which uses permanent magnets instead of the exciter teeth
[15]. The lack of impact excitations in contactless wind generator
improves the fatigue life of the harvester. Since the excitations are
almost harmonic, the maximum energy is achieved when the
rotational frequency of the blades matches the excitation
frequency. The vibrations of the beams are linear. Thus, the device is
sensitive to the rotational speed of the blades and is therefore
responsive in a narrow range of wind speed. Although in [15] the
wind genrator is 230 mm
165 mm
165 mm, its power rating is
in order of micro watts which is insufcient for the majority of
sensor nodes. However, the startup wind speed of the device is only
0.9 ms1, which is a big improvement over electromagnetic
generators.
In the following we present the novel nonlinear piezoelectric
wind turbine which not only has a low startup wind speed but also
produces sufcient amounts of power for operating common
sensor nodes. We discuss the rotary and wind tunnel experimental
investigations that characterize the piezoelectric rotary transducer
and the overall compact wind generator. An analytical method is
developed which matches the experimental investigations and
explains the observed nonlinear phenomena.
2. Device conguration and fabrication
The key limitation of the existing piezoelectric wind generators
is their insufcient power rating. The generated power has a direct
relation with the rate of deection of the piezoelectric beams. To
enhance the power either magnetic interactions or dynamics of the
beams has to be altered. The second challenge with the state of the
art piezoelectric wind genrators is their limited frequency band-
width which translates to limited operational wind range. It has
been shown that making the dynamics of the beams nonlinear and
bi-stable increases the amplitude of vibrations and enhances the
frequency bandwidth [16e23]. The zero deection equilibrium of
a bi-sable beam is unstable. Instead, the beam has two stable static
equilibriums, one involving its bending to the left and the other its
bending to the right. The common approach to make the beams bi-
stable is through incorporation of repelling magnetic force. Modi-
fying the wind generator according to Fig. 1a would be along the
common approach. The top pairs of magnets are responsible for
changing the dynamics of the beams to nonlinear and bi-stable. The
interaction of the lower pairs of magnets bend the beams and excite
them. There are two problems with the design presented in Fig. 1a.
First, in that conguration, the top portion of the beams and the top
portion of the support structure occlude the blades and deteriorate
their efciency. Second, the numerous magnets in that design
Fig. 1. Nonlinear piezoelectric wind harvester: (a) function specic magnets (b) tangential conguration and (c) radial conguration.
interact with each other and the interaction of top and lower
magnets result in complications of the dynamics of the beams.
In the proposed devices (Fig. 1a and b) the same magnets that
transfer the mechanical energy to the piezoelectric beams, make
them nonlinear and bi-stable. The blades section on top rotates in
response to winds. The rotating magnets are incorporated in the
disk which is attached to the rotating blades. The vertical piezo-
electric cantilever beams are clamped at one side to the base of the
energy harvesting device. The tip magnets are positioned at the tip
of the bimorphs to repel the rotating magnets. When a rotating
magnet and a tip magnet align, the repelling magnetic force makes
the corresponding piezoelectric beam bi-stable. In contrast when
a tip magnet is far from rotating magnets the beam is mono-stable.
The dynamics of the beams therefore, are related to the relative
distance between the tip and rotating magnets. The rotation of the
blades periodically changes the parameters in the governing
dynamic equations of the beams. As a result the system is para-
metrically excited. This study is different from other work on
parametrically excited energy harvesting systems [24,25] in the
sense that the system, presented here, is both directly and para-
metrically excited. The presence of two excitation mechanisms not
only increases the power output but also adds to the number of
optimal frequencies. The resonance in a parametrically excited
system occurs at twice its natural frequency [26]. The beams in our
piezoelectric transducer resonate at their natural frequency from
direct excitation and at twice their natural frequency due to para-
metric excitations.
Two different arrangements are proposed: one called tangential
conguration (Fig. 1b) and the other is called radial conguration
(Fig. 1c). In the radial conguration, the beams deect along the
radius of the rotating disk. The direct excitation force is perpen-
dicular to the rotating disk. Considering the motion of the blades
and the direct excitation force applied to the beams, the excitation
force is perpendicular to the direction of the motion of the blades.
This limits the energy transfer through direct excitations. There-
fore, in radial arrangement, the parametric excitations are more
signicant than the direct excitations. In tangential conguration,
the beams vibrate in the direction which is tangent to the rotating
disk. The direct excitation force is also tangent to the rotating disk.
As a result the direct excitation force is in line with the direction of
the motion of the blades. This enhances the energy transfer
through direct excitations. Therefore, in the tangential congura-
tion, parametric and ordinary excitations are of the same order of
magnitude and are equally important.
The piezoelectric harvesters are illustrated in Fig. 2. The size of
the tangential nonlinear piezoelectric wind mill is approximately
80 mm by 80 mm by 175 mm. The size of the radial wind turbine is
 M.A. Karami et al. / Renewable Energy 50 (2013) 977e987
Fig. 2. Nonlinear piezoelectric wind harvester prototypes: (a) tangential conguration
and (b) radial conguration.
about 75 mm by 75 mm by 165 mm. The base and the main column
of the wind turbines are machined out of aluminum. The devices
accommodate placement of four piezoelectric bimorphs. The PZT-
5A bimorphs are from Piezosystems Inc. They are 12.7 mm wide
and 0.38 mm thick .The clamp to tip length of the bimorphs is
58 mm. The bimorphs are clamped at the bottom to the base of the
wind mill. The tip magnets are supported by a rapid prototyped
xture which connects them to the tip of the beams. The blades are
made from Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and are fabricated using rapid
prototyping technique. The rotating magnets are placed in the
lower disk of the blades part. Five rotating magnets are equally
spaced on the rotating disk. The force between the tip and rotating
magnets is maximum when the two magnets align. If there were
four rotating magnets they all simultaneously aligned with the
corresponding tip magnets. The repulsive magnetic force in that
situation signicantly affected the rotation speed. By incorporating
ve rotating magnets, the tip magnets align with the rotating
magnets one at a time. This results in smooth rotation of the blades
and steady power production.
The tip and rotating magnets in tangential design are
12.7 mm
6.35 mm
6.35 mm NeodymiumeIroneBoron magnets
from Magcraft, with 1.25 T remanent ux density. The dimensions of
the tip magnets in the radial design are the same as those in
tangential, but the rotating magnets in the radial design are
6.35 mm
6.35 mm
6.35 mm. In all of the experiments the shunt
resistance has a constant value. The value is derived from R0 1/(uC),
were C is the capacitance of the piezoelectric beams. The rotational
frequency of the resonance of the beams, u, is about 105 radians per
second. The resistive load is 247 kU for all the presented experiments.
Fig. 3. The motor driven data collection setup: (a) close up view of the device and (b) the measurement setup.
979
3. Constant rpm experiments
To examine the developed piezoelectric rotary transducer, we
identify the relation between the rotational speed of the blades and
the power output. A FAULHABER, 2250 BX4 CSD/CCD controlled
brushless DC motor is mounted to the shaft of the rotor to rotate the
blades at the desired rates. The distance between the tip and
rotating magnets can be adjusted by adjusting the position of the
blades assembly along the rotating shaft. The best power perfor-
mance is achieved when the beams become bi-stable due to the
magnetic force. However, we consider a broader range of magnet
gap that includes mono-stable congurations as well. To minimize
the rotational friction the rotating shaft is supported by two
miniature ball bearings. The constant rpm test setup has been
illustrated in Fig. 3.
The controlled DC motor is utilized to sweep the rotational
velocity of the blades over an rpm range containing the beams
resonance. The tip displacement, tip velocity, and piezoelectric
voltage are measured. For each value of rotational velocity the data
is recorded over 10 seconds. The power output and vibration
characteristics of the tangential conguration when the magnet
gap is 25 mm are illustrated in Fig. 4. It is shown that the maximum
overall power at resonance is equal to 5 mw. As illustrated in Fig. 4a
the frequency bandwidth of the optimal power is about 2 Hz. The
off resonance power generation of linear systems are orders of
magnitude smaller than the resonance power. In contrast, the
rotation frequency of the nonlinear piezoelectric wind generator
can change for about 10 Hz without a drop in order of magnitude of
the power generation.
Fig. 4c illustrates the dominant frequency of the vibrations of
the beams. The frequency corresponds to the largest amplitude in
the Fourier transform of the tip velocity. As illustrated in Fig. 4c the
dominant frequency is ve times the rotational frequency of the
blades. This is expected since 5 rotating magnets are placed on the
blades section. There is a repelling force between the tip and
rotating magnets. When a rotating magnet is approaching a tip
magnet, the repelling force slows down the rotating magnets and
the blades. After the magnets pass over each other the repelling
force pushes the blades forward and accelerates them. The speed
uctuations are undesirable and must be minimized. Using a closed
loop DC motor instead of an open loop motor for constant rpm
experiments reduces the uctuations. However the closed loop
motor alone can only limit the speed uctuations to 10e20%
depending on the magnet gap. To further reduce the uctuations
of the prescribed speed we use a passive inertia mechanism. We
connect a heavy copper disk to the shaft of the system. The copper
disk, which has a moment of inertia of 3.81 kg cm2, acts as
a ywheel and further stabilizes the rpm. The ywheel is only used
for constant rpm experiments and is removed during the wind
980 M.A. Karami et al. / Renewable Energy 50 (2013) 977e987

Fig. 4. Frequency response functions for 25 mm magnet gap, tangential conguration. The green curve is positive frequency sweep the blue corresponds to negative sweep: (a) tip
displacement, (b) tip velocity, (c) dominant vibration frequency, (d) rms power output, and (e) the relation between rotational frequency of the blades and the dominant vibration
frequency of the beams. (For interpretation of the references to color in this gure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

tunnel tests. As illustrated in Fig. 4d and Fig. 6c, using the ywheel
reduces the uctuation of the prescribed speed to less than 5%.
The phase portraits presented in Fig. 4e and Fig. 4f illustrate that
the vibrations of the beams are approximately harmonic. Although
the uctuations in the rotor rpm are less than 5%, they slightly make
the phase portrait fuzzy and prevent us reaching a condent judg-
ment on the nature of vibrations. The relation between the magnet
gap and power characteristics of the harvester is illustrated in Fig. 5.
The results have been collected from a four beam wind harvester. The
smaller the gap, the larger the magnetic forces, and the larger the
power output. The resonance rpm changes with the magnet gap; the
smaller the magnet gap, the larger the axial force, and the smaller the
resonance rpm. On the other hand decreasing the magnet gap
increases the startup wind speed. Overall the better power generation
is more desirable and one should choose the smallest magnet gap that
does not lead to low cycle fatigue of the piezoelectric beams.
The power and vibration characteristics of the radial nonlinear
piezoelectric harvester are presented in Fig. 6. The device is a single
beam energy harvester and the magnet gap is 22 mm. The power
generated by the radial design is less than the power from
tangential conguration but almost on the same order of magni-
tude. The vibrations and power generation characteristics of the
radial device are qualitatively similar to those of the tangential
device. However, the speed uctuations of the bimorphs in the
radial congurations are less than those in the tangential design.
This can be easily spotted on the vibration frequency graph (Fig. 6b)
and the rpm uctuation graph (Fig. 6c). The variation of the powere
rpm relation with the magnet gap is illustrated in Fig. 7.
 M.A. Karami et al. / Renewable Energy 50 (2013) 977e987
Fig. 5. The power output frequency response functions for tangential conguration,
legend is the magnet distance.
4. Wind tunnel experiments
The next step of investigations involves characterizing the
piezoelectric wind energy harvester with wind tunnel experiments
(Fig. 8). The vibrations of the beam are measured using the laser
vibrometer, the power output of the beams are individually
measured across the 247 kU resistive loads. As illustrated in Fig. 9a
the power generated by the tangential wind harvester monoto-
nously increases with the wind speed. Given that the resonance
effects are signicant in the powererpm relation, the rotational
speed of the blades cannot signicantly change with the wind
speed. This behavior is better understood by the relation between
the wind speed and the blades rpm (Fig. 9b). Although the rota-
tional speed of the blades increases with the wind speed, it satu-
rates to the optimal rotational speed. At higher wind speeds the
device operates closer to the optimal spinning condition and thus
generates more power. The trend of course breaks if the wind speed
is too large, but 10 ms1 is a good upper estimate for conventional
wind. The wind tunnel results show that the single beam device can
generate 4 mW of power at 10 ms1 using a single PZT bimorph.
The startup wind speed of the harvester is 2 ms1 or 4.5 mph.
A new phenomenon is observed in the wind tunnel experiments
involving the radial design (Fig. 10). In the speed up tests (solid
lines) when the wind speed is bellow 3 ms1, the powerewind
speed and rpmewind speed plots are qualitatively similar to
those of tangential design. However when the wind speed exceeds
3 ms1, the rpm suddenly jumps to a large value. In that condition,
since the rpm is far from the optimal rpm for the piezoelectric
beam, the power output signicantly deteriorates. Occurrence of
the rpm jump phenomenon is not reversible. After the sudden
increase in the speed of the blades, reducing the wind speed does
not bring the system back to resonant condition. The wind turbine
conditions follow a different path during the slow down experi-
ments. The fact that there are multiple possible states for a single
wind speed proves that the system is nonlinear. In real situation the
initial conditions (mainly the initial rpm) dictates which of the two
solutions will happen. If the initial rpm is small, the high-power,
low-rpm equilibrium prevails and if the initial rpm is more than
the optimal value, the low-power, high-speed solution happens.
The analytical model presented in the next section gives a quanti-
tative explanation for the jump phenomenon. Since in radial
981
congurations direct excitations are less signicant, the start up
speed is only 1.2 ms1. The power generation of the radial design
however, is almost one order of magnitude less than the tangential
design. This makes the radial design less practical than the
tangential conguration.
5. Modeling
The energy harvesting system is composed of three coupled
systems: 1- The blades are powered by the wind and translate the
power to the piezoelectric beams. 2- The piezoelectric beams are
driven by the rotation of the magnets attached to the blades and drive
the electrical circuits. 3- The resistive load consumes the power
generated by the piezoelectric element. The common approach in
modeling wind generators is to divide it to blades subsystem and the
generator subsystem, derive torqueerpm relation for each subsystem
and by matching the two relations calculate the steady state operation
point [27]. We focus on evaluating the torqueerpm relation for the
generator subsystem. For a specic value of the rotational speed we
examine the vibrations of the beams and the generated electric power.
In this section we only model the tangential design since experimental
investigations proved it advantageous over the radial design.
In spite of its simple physics, the device dynamics is complicated.
Due to the challenges discussed in the following, it is inaccurate to
use approximate analytical methods to solve the equations. The rst
challenge is that the piezoelectric beams are not harmonically
excited. To illustrate this point let us consider a simplied case
where the piezoelectric beams are rigid. In that condition the lateral
magnetic force on the tip of the beam changes with the rotation
angle of the blades according to the trend illustrated in Fig. 12. Even
for this simplied case the excitation force is not harmonic. When
the rotating magnet is far from the tip magnet the force is small. The
force maximizes and suddenly changes direction when the two
magnets align. Perturbation techniques and the majority of analyt-
ical methods used for nonlinear systems are applicable if the exci-
tations are harmonic [26,28]. It has been shown in [29] that the
response of nonlinear systems to non-harmonic inputs can be
qualitatively different than their response to harmonic excitations.
In reality the location of the tip magnet changes as well as the
position of the rotating magnets. The second challenge in modeling
the dynamics of the piezoelectric beams is the presence of 5 rotating
magnets. At each instance the tip magnet interacts with all of the 5
rotating magnets. However, as illustrated in Fig. 12, the magnetic
force between the tip magnet and the closest rotating magnet
dominates the other magnet interactions. Since the tip magnet
vibrates it can move from the vicinity of one rotating magnet to the
vicinity of another rotating magnet in a short while. Once the closest
rotating magnet to the tip magnet is identied, the lateral magnetic
force between the pair of magnets is calculated from [19] as:

.
7=2
fz 3m0 ma mb =4p x3  4s2 x s2 x2 (1)
The magnetic moment vector of each magnet (ma and mb) is
related to the residual ux density of the magnet (B), permeability
of the air (m0), and the volume of the magnet (Vm) as:
m BVm =m0 (2)
As illustrated in Fig. 13, s is the axial distance and x is the lateral
distance between the tip and magnet and the closest rotating
magnet. The lateral distance is calculated from the angular
distance between the tip and rotating magnets (Fig. 11b):
 
q p
x 2Rsin d R 21  cosqd , where R is the mean radius of
2
the rotating magnets.
982 M.A. Karami et al. / Renewable Energy 50 (2013) 977e987

Fig. 6. Power generations and vibration characteristics of the radial conguration in motor driven tests, the magnet gap is 22 mm: (a) rms power, (b) dominant vibration frequency,
(c) the uctuations in the rpm, (d) and (e) phase portrait of the tip vibrations at different motor rpms. In parts (a) to (c) the blue curve corresponds to speed up tests and the green
curve is for slow down test. (For interpretation of the references to color in this gure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
2 3
The third complication in modeling the device is the inuence of Z L  2
v2 w vw v4 w 4 EA vw v2 w
the axial force. The axial force between the tip and rotating magnet m 2 c EI 4 fx  dx5 2
vt vt vx 2L vx vx
when the beam is deected results in a bending torque and deects 0 (4)
the beam. In the literature on nonlinear energy harvesting the  
ddx ddxL
inuence of the axial force is often neglected compared to the effect g  Vt fz dxL
dx dx
of lateral force. However we could not get a satisfactory match
between the model predictions and the experimental results unless where m is the total mass per unit length of the beam, w(x,t) is
we accounted for the axial force in our model. By differentiating the deection along the z-axis (Fig. 11), EI is the equivalent bending
magnetic potential energy with respect to the axial distance the stiffness of the composite beam, fx is the axial magnetic force, EA is
axial magnetic force is calculated: the equivalent axial stiffness of the beam, L is the length of the
beam, a is the piezoelectric coupling coefcient, d(x) is Dirac delta

.
7
fx 3m0 ma mb =4p  2s3 3sx2 s2 x2
2
(3) function, and V is the voltage across the piezoelectric elements
which are connected in parallel. The width of the beam is noted by
The governing differential equations for the piezoelectric beam b the thickness of the substrate is ts, the thickness of the piezo-
subjected to an axial force is [21,30,31]: electric layer is tp, and the piezoelectric coefcient is noted by e13.
 M.A. Karami et al. / Renewable Energy 50 (2013) 977e987 983

wind tunnel experiment that the rotational speed of the blades is

usually close to the rst natural frequency of the piezoelectric
beams. We therefore simplify the modeling by only considering the
fundamental mode of the beams. The assumed mode shape is
fundamental mode shape of a cantilever beam [33]. The mode
shape is noted by fx, by rewriting the deection of the beam as
wx;t fxTt, multiplying both sides of Eq. (5) by the mode
shape and integrating from 0 to L we discretize Eq. (5) as:


MT cT_ k  bfx T aV fz f L (6)

The mode shape is scaled such the modal mass,

Z L
2
M m f xdx, is one. The damping coefcient is determined
0
experimentally. The bending stiffness term, k, is equal to
Z L
k EI f4 xfxdx. The softening coefcient due to the axial
0
Z L
force is b f0 LfL  f02 xdx. The piezoelectric coupling
0
Fig. 7. The power output frequency response functions for radial conguration, legend coefcient is a g0 L. Both axial and lateral components of the
is the magnet distance. magnetic force change with the relative motion of tip and rotating
magnets according to Eq. (1) and Eq. (3). The electrical equation of
The coupling coefcient g is equal to g 2be13 ts tp =2. Since
the piezoelectric beams is
the axial magnetic force is large, the terms representing the
geometric nonlinearities can be neglected compared to the axial
force term [32]. Eq. (4) can therefore be simplied to V=R0 C V_ aT_ (7)
 
v2 w vw v4 w v2 w ddx ddxL
m 2 c EI 4 fx 2 g  Vt fz dxL where R0 is the electric load and C is the capacitance of the
vt vt vx vx dx dx
piezoelectric layer. Since the mode shape is mass normalized the
(5)
coupling coefcient in Eq. (6) and Eq. (7) are the same. The two
The continuous governing differential equations can be dis- equations form the governing equations of the vibration and
cretized using the assumed mode method. It was observed in the energy harvesting from the piezoelectric beams.

Fig. 8. Experimental setups for the wind tunnel tests: (a) overview and (b) the device in the wind tunnel.

Fig. 9. Results of the wind tunnel tests for the tangential conguration with one piezoelectric beam. The magnet gap is 25 mm. Solid line represent speed up and the dashed line
correspond to slow down tests. (a) rms power and (b) rotational speed of the blades.
984 M.A. Karami et al. / Renewable Energy 50 (2013) 977e987

Fig. 10. Results of the wind tunnel tests for the radial conguration with one piezoelectric beam. The magnet gap is 25 mm. Solid line represent speed up and the dashed line
correspond to slow down tests. (a) rms power and (b) rotational speed of the blades.

Fig. 11. Relative position of tip and rotating magnets: (a) side view and (b) top view.

6. Verication of the model

This section compares the predictions of the model with the

Fig. 13. Schematic diagram of magnetic dipoles.
experimental results. The governing equations, (Eqs. (6) and (7)),
are numerically integrated to predict the vibration and energy
harvesting characteristics of the test setup. The magnetic force
relations in Eqs. (1) and (3) are approximate since they do not
.
7
fz a x3  4s2 x s2 x 2
2
(8)
account for either the edge effects, the rotation of the tip, or the
angle of the rotating magnets. The force expressions are therefore
expressed in the following forms:
.
7
fx c  2s3 3sx2 s2 x2
2
(9)

The values of the a and c coefcients are not known ahead of the
experiments and are identied according to the experimental
results. The coefcient a mostly inuences the amplitude of
vibrations while the coefcient c dominantly affects the resonance
frequency.

Table 1
Specications of the prototype.

Length of the piezoelectric beams, l (mm) 50

Width of the beams, b (mm) 12.7
Thickness of each of the Piezo layers, hp (mm) 127
Thickness of the substructure, hs (mm) 101.6
Tip mass (magnet and the xture) (g) 6.3
Youngs modulus of the Piezo layer, Yp (GPa) 66
Youngs modulus of the brass substructure, Ys (GPa) 110
Density of the piezo layer, rp (kg/m3) 7700
Density if the brass substructure, rs (kg/m3) 2329
Permittivity, s33 (nF/m) 15.93
Average piezoelectric Constant, d31 (pm/V) 160
Average damping ratio, z 0.02
Average lateral force coefcient, a, (Ncm4) 2.5
Average axial force coefcient ratio, c, (mNm4) 3.1
Fig. 12. Schematic relation between force and rotation angle.
 M.A. Karami et al. / Renewable Energy 50 (2013) 977e987
Fig. 14. Experimental results vs. model predictions for 22 mm magnet gap: (a) tip velocity, (b) dominant frequency of vibrations, (c) rms power of one beam, and (d) tip
displacement.
The material properties and the other parameters used for
model verication are presented in Table 1. The model is matched
against experimental results with ve different magnet gaps
ranging from 22 mm to 35 mm. The experiments have been con-
ducted with only one of the four piezoelectric bimorphs in place.
This avoids the complications due to the mutual interaction of the
tip magnets. Close agreement between model and experiments is
achieved for all of the ve cases. Two case studies corresponding to
smallest and largest magnet gaps have been showcased in Fig. 14
and Fig. 15. The difference of the identied parameters among the
cases is small. For example, the variation of the piezoelectric
constant, d31, is between 155.8 and 161.5 pm/V. The tip
displacement data presented in Fig. 14d and Fig. 15d are based on
the model.
Thus far the accuracy of the model is veried. Since we have
identied the a, c, z, and d31 parameters for each magnet gap, we
can conduct more elaborate case studies for those congurations.
The beams are parametrically excited, thus a second resonance at
twice the natural frequency of the beams is expected in frequency
response functions. The range of rpm in controlled rotational speed
tests was not sufcient to capture the parametric resonance. We
extend this range of rotational speed during an analytical case
study. As illustrated in Fig. 16, there is a prominent peak at twice the
resonant speed of the beams. This proves that the parametric
excitations are signicant in the tangential conguration.
The model can also indicate the physical quantities that could
not be measured during the experiments (Fig. 16c and Fig. 16d). The
key parameter in understanding the jump phenomenon of the
wind generator is the torque applied by the tip magnets to the
rotating blades assembly. The common practice for predicting the
steady state condition of wind generators is to characterize its two
985
subsystems [27]. First the aerodynamics of the blades is charac-
terized and a curve relating the torque from the blades to their
rotational speed is derived for a given wind speed. Second the
electric generator is investigated and the torqueerpm relation is
identied for a specic electrical load. Then the two curves are
compared and the intersection of the two torqueerpm curves gives
the rotational speed of the wind generator for the specic wind and
electrical load condition. The blade mechanism in our device is well
known [34] but the generating system is completely novel. We use
the model to get the torque-rpm curve for the generator subsystem.
The steady state rpm of the piezoelectric wind turbine (Fig. 17) is
the intersection point of the rpmetorques curves for the piezo-
electric subsystem (Fig. 16d) and that of the blades. There is a sharp
peak at resonance rpm (about 200) in the torqueerpm relation for
the transduction subsystem (Fig. 16d). Due to this sharp increase in
torque the rpm of the blades stays mostly in the vicinity of the
resonance rpm; The parallel curves in Fig. 17 represent typical
torque-rpm relations for the blades subsystem [27]. Fig. 17 illus-
trates that increasing the wind speed shifts the characteristic curve
for the blades up (from point AeB). However due to the sharpness
of the peak in the characteristic curve of the transduction
subsystem, the consequent change in the rpm of the system is very
little. This is only true if the wind speed is below the critical speed.
When the wind speed surpasses the critical speed the trans-
duction subsystem cannot balance the torque of the blades in the
vicinity of the optimal rpm. The location of the steady state
condition thus suddenly changes to high rotational speeds (point
C). After the speed goes far beyond the resonance range, decreasing
the wind speed does not bring the system to optimal conditions
anymore. In fact looking at torqueerpm relations for the blades we
see that the system has two potential solutions. The initial
Fig. 15. Experimental results vs. model predictions for 35 mm magnet gap: (a) tip velocity, (b) dominant frequency of vibrations, (c) rms power of one beam and (d) tip
displacement.

Fig. 16. Model predictions for extended range of rotational speed. The magnet gap is 22 mm: (a) rms power, (b) tip velocity, (c) tip displacement, (d) rms magnetic torque on the rotor.
 M.A. Karami et al. / Renewable Energy 50 (2013) 977e987
Fig. 17. Explanation of the jump phenomenon.
conditions determine which potential solution becomes the steady
state condition. If the initial spinning speed is low the low-rpm
solution occurs and if the initial spinning speed is large the high-
rpm solution happens. Therefore once the jump phenomenon
occurs and the speed increase to the high range, decreasing the
speed results in operation conditions D and E.
7. Conclusions
Novel compact piezoelectric wind harvesters were presented for
generating power from low speed wind. The device can indenitely
power sensor nodes located in remote or hard to reach places. The
advantage of the proposed device over electromagnetic wind
generators is its low start up speed. At the same time the proposed
design produces more power than the state of the art piezoelectric
wind turbines. The device is designed to be nonlinear and thus
generates sufcient amounts of power over a relatively large range
of wind speed. The device utilizes both nonlinear parametric exci-
tation and ordinary excitation mechanisms to enhance the power
production. Two different congurations have been introduced. The
difference between the radial and tangential congurations is the
larger amount of ordinary excitations in the tangential design. The
piezoelectric transducer was characterized through constant rota-
tional speed experiments. The wind tunnel experiments showed
that for a large range of wind speed the relation between the power
output and the wind speed is not prone to resonance. It was shown
that a single beam piezoelectric wind generator can produce
milliwatts of power from wind as slow at 2 meters per second . An
analytical model was developed for prediction of the behavior of the
novel energy harvesting system. The model, which was veried
using the experimental results, could explain the jump phenom-
enon in the wind tunnel test results.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Mr. Thomas Deplace for his help in
conducting the experiments. The conversations with Dr. S. Priya
and Mr. S. Bressers from Center for Intelligent Material Systems and
Structures at Virginia Tech are appreciated.
This work was performed under the support of the US Depart-
ment of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology,
Technology Innovation Program, Cooperative Agreement Number
70NANB9H9007".
987
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