Modeling of a novel magneto-electro-elastic energy harvester under appliedvoltage with simultaneous use as actuator

This paper introduces a novel harvester to store the electrical power, which comes from external appliedelectrical voltage power. The beam of energy harvester consists of an active Magneto-electro-elastic(MEE) layer attached to the homogeneous elastic substrate layer. Assuming that the connection of theselayers is perfect, the uni- and bi-morph configurations of the MEE layers (including serial, parallel, andsingle-layer connections) are investigated. The coupled magneto-electro-mechanical (MeM) governingdifferential equations of the MEE energy harvesting system are derived for a harmonic external appliedelectrical voltage in the transversal direction based on Euler-Bernoulli theory, Gaussian law, and Faradaylaw. These equations are solved analytically to determine the amount of harvested power and voltage. Asa result, a new circuit has been designed and implemented to store power in capacitors. The results showthat the single-layer uni-morph configuration is the best choice for storing more overall power.Furthermore, the most optimal parameters of the energy-harvesting circuit for extracting the maximumenergy from the various configurations have been determined. Finally, these results prove the usefulnessand efficiency of the dual-usage (actuator-harvester) of the new energy harvester.