Effect of Electromechanical Coupling on Locally Resonant Metastructures for Simultaneous Energy Harvesting and Vibration Attenuation Applications

The study of simultaneous energy harvesting and vibration attenuation has recently been the focus in many acoustic meta-materials investigations. The studies have reported the possibility of harvesting electric power using electromechanical coupling; however, the effect of the electromechanical resonator on the obtained bandgap’s boundaries has not been explored yet. In this paper, we investigate metamaterial coupled to electromechanical resonators to demonstrate the effect of electromechanical coupling on the wave propagation analytically and experimentally. The electromechanical resonator is shunted to an external load resistor to harvest energy. We derive the analytical dispersion curve of the system and show the band structure for different load resistors and electromechanical coupling coefficients. To verify the analytical dispersion relations, we also simulate the system numerically. Furthermore, experiment is carried out to validate the analytical observations. The obtained observations can guide designers in selecting electromechanical resonator parameters for effective energy harvesting from meta-materials.