Electromechanical Modeling of a Honeycomb Core Integrated Vibration Energy Converter with Increased Specific Power for Energy Harvesting Applications

............................................................................................................................. ii Dedication .......................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgement ............................................................................................................... v Table of contents ................................................................................................................ vi List of Figures ................................................................................................................. viii List of tables ....................................................................................................................... xi Chapter 1: Problem overview .............................................................................................. 1 1.1. Research motivation ................................................................................................. 1 1.2. Review on current energy harvesting technologies .................................................. 7 1.3. Research Objective ................................................................................................. 25 1.4. Thesis Organization ................................................................................................ 27 Chapter 2: Review of the elastic behavior of cellular structures ....................................... 28 2.2. Characteristic features of the unit cell. ................................................................... 28 2.3. Deformation mechanism of hexagonal honeycomb structures ............................... 31 2.4. In-plane elastic behavior of hexagonal honeycombs .............................................. 33 2.5. Out-of-plane elastic properties of hexagonal honeycombs .................................... 37 2.6. Design of honeycomb structures ............................................................................ 39 Chapter 3: Electromechanical modeling of piezoelectric harvesters Page