ACTIVITIES

Time：Monday14:00pm, January 6, 2020

Location：Room 2-2072, Building 2, iHarbour campus

Presenter：Wei WANG (王伟)

Presentation topic：

1. Two-years studying in University of Toronto as a visiting student supported by CSC

University：University of Toronto, Canada

Study time ：January 2018 ~ December 2019

Abstract

In the past two years, Mr. Wang was supported by CSC and performed his research work as a visiting Ph.D student supervised by Prof. Naguib at the Department of Mechanical Industrial and Engineering (MIE), University of Toronto, Canada. His major research directions are energy harvesting from vibrations, smart materials and structures, and he published four journal papers and two conference papers during his stay at University of Toronto. In the presentation, Mr. Wang will share his research and studying experience at University of Toronto. Also, something about University of Toronto and the living experience there will be presented.

2. Presentation of attending the 2018 ASME-IDETC/ICE (International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference)

Time： August 26-29, 2018

Location： Quebec City, Canada

Brief introduction：The ASME 2018 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (IDETC/CIE 2018) took place during August 26-29, 2018 in Quebec City, Canada. IDETC/CIE 2018 highlighted emergent technologies that impact the critical engineering issues of product design and development, manufacturing, and the management and integration of information systems throughout the product life-cycle. These events were key international meetings for design and manufacturing engineers in academia, government and industry.

Information of conference paper:

Title: Influence of bias angle on output performance of nonlinear asymmetric energy harvesters: experimental investigation

Authors: Wei Wang, Junyi Cao^*, Ying Zhang, Chris R. Bowen

Abstract: In recent decades, the technique of piezoelectric energy harvesting has drawn a great deal of attention since it is a promising method to convert vibrational energy to electrical energy to supply lower-electrical power consumption devices. The most commonly used configuration for energy harvesting is the piezoelectric cantilever beam. Due to the inability of linear energy harvesting to capture broadband vibrations, most researchers have been focusing on broadband performance enhancement by introducing nonlinear phenomena into the harvesting systems. Previous studies have often focused on the symmetric potential harvesters excited in a fixed direction and the influence of the gravity of the oscillators was neglected. However, it is difficult to attain a completely symmetric energy harvester in practice. Furthermore, the gravity of the oscillator due to the change of installation angle will also exert a dramatic influence on the power output. Therefore, this paper experimentally investigates the influence of gravity due to bias angle on the output performance of asymmetric potential energy harvesters under harmonic excitation. An experimental system is developed to measure the output voltages of the harvesters at different bias angles. Experimental results show that the bias angle has little influence on the performance of linear and monostable energy harvesters. However, for an asymmetric potential bistable harvester with sensitive nonlinear restoring forces, the bias angle influences the power output greatly due to the effect of gravity. There exists an optimum bias angle range for the asymmetric potential bistable harvester to generate large output power in a broader frequency range. The reason for this phenomenon is that the influence of gravity due to bias angle will balance the nonlinear asymmetric potential function in a certain range, which could be applied to improve the power output of asymmetric bistable harvesters.