Optimal vibration energy harvesting from nonprismatic piezolaminated beam

The present article encompasses a nonlinear finite element (FE) and genetic algorithm (GA) based optimal vibration energy harvesting from nonprismatic piezo-laminated cantilever beams. Three cases of cross section profiles (such as linear, parabolic and cubic) are modelled to analyse the geometric nonlinear effects on the output responses such as displacement, voltage, and power. The simultaneous effects of taper ratios (such as breadth and height taper) on the output power are also studied. The FE based nonlinear dynamic equation of motion has been solved by an implicit integration method (i.e., Newmark method in conjunction with the Newton-Raphson method). Besides this, a real coded GA based constrained optimization scheme has also been proposed to determine the best set of design variables for optimal harvesting of power within the safe limits of beam stress and PZT breakdown voltage.