Uncertainty Quantification of Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters from Aeroelastic Vibrations

A stochastic approach is presented to evaluate the uncertainties associated with variations in design parameters of a piezoaeroelastic energy harvester. The sensitivities of the harvested power to variations in the load resistance, the eccentricity (distance between the center of mass and the elastic axis), and the nonlinear coeffcients are also determined. Moreover, the non-intrusive formulation of the polynomial chaos expansion in terms of the multivariate Hermite polynomials was employed to quantify the sensitivities in the harvested power and the plunge and pitch motions. The results show that the relationship between the input parameters and the harvested power is highly nonlinear. The results show also that the generated power is most sensitive to variations in the eccentricity and that the nonlinear coeffcient of the plunge spring is less influential than the nonlinear coeffcient of the torsional spring on the harvester’s performance.