The outbreak of many energy and environmental problems is greatly related to the increasing consumption of resources. In recent years, there has been obvious advancement in the fields of new energy and energy recovery. For example, laying a piezoelectric energy-collector on the road is capable of collecting the mechanical energies generated by passing vehicles. It is known that the surface of the piezoelectric material will release electric charge when it is subjected to external mechanical stress, in which manner the piezoelectric energy-collector exactly works. Although the piezoelectric energy collection technology has been widely applied with little or even no environmental pollution, still there are many key problems to be solved in this technology, e.g., how to improve the energy conversion efficiency of piezoelectric materials, especially for polymeric ones? In this context, piezoelectric composite materials, generally consisting of the thermoplastic polymers as matrices and the inorganic piezoelectric materials as fillers, have attracted increased attention as they possess excellent piezoelectric properties of inorganic ones and good processibility of polymer ones. The performance parameters of piezoelectric composites have direct impacts on the efficiency of piezoelectric energy conversion, which has been not well documented yet, especially for those used in transportation and road engineering applications. In the present work, the poly (vinylidene fluoride) composite filled with the lead zirconium titanate (PVDF/PZT) was numerically investigated focusing on the improvement of piezoelectric performance parameters. With a multi-scale simulation strategy, effects of PZT’s volume fraction, shape, orientation and length on the piezoelectric coefficient *d~33~* of the composites were systematically examined. Specifically, at the micro-scale, Comsol Multiphysics connected with Matlab was utilized to create the cell volume model of piezoelectric composites. In this step, factors like PZT content and shape (spherical particles or whiskers) were considered. Furthermore, in order to simulate the influences of forming process on the piezoelectric performance, the orientation and length of PZT whiskers were also considered. The preliminary simulation results show that parameters of PZT nano-fillers greatly affect the piezoelectric constant, *d~33~*. As for the macro-scale simulation, the piezoelectric energy-collector widely used in transportation engineering applications was modeled, with piezoelectric constants obtained at micro-scale simulation as inputs. The correlation between the output voltage of the energy-collector and PZT parameters (i.e., content, shape, orientation, and length) was successfully developed by applying the vehicle’s axle-load. Finally, the simulation results were experimentally validated, with the variation mechanism of the energy-collector’s piezoelectric performance changing with the piezoelectric material fully discussed. This work provides a way for tailoring the piezoelectric performance of the macro components (i.e., sensors) through adjusting the states of the fillers inside the piezoelectric composites.


Piezoelectric Performance of PVDF Composites for Transportation Engineering: A Multi-Scale Simulation Study

Division / Sponsors: 
Aerospace, Bioengineering, Applied Mechanics, Design Engineering Division, Advanced Energy Systems, Manufacturing Engineering Division, Noise Control and Acoustics, Nondestructive Evaluation, Diagnosis, and Prognosis (NDPD), Nuclear Engineering Division, Process Industries Division, Fluids Engineering, Heat Transfer, Materials, Microelectromechanical Systems, Safety Engineering and Risk Analysis, Computers & Information in Engineering


Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IMECE/IMECE2020/volume/84478

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