A Numerical Approach for Flexoelectric Energy Harvester Modeling Using COMSOL Multiphysics

As a piezoelectricity-like electromechanical coupling effect, flexoelectricity has stimulated more and more interest because of its unique virtues from discipline of material, mechanical engineering, automation, instrument, etc. Due to the lack of flexoelectric module in all of the commercial finite element software at the moment, numerical modelling flexoelectric electromechanical response turned to be a professional programming work which only be implemented by a small number of researchers within a limited discipline field. In the meantime, there exists a strong need for more understanding of dynamic flexoelectric electromechanical response in application areas such as energy harvester, wave filter and so on. However, benefitting from the external equation interface of COMSOL Multiphysics, we developed a cost-effective numerical approach to implement the dynamic flexoelectric electromechanical response in dielectric solids. As a specific case, a plate-mass-type energy harvester employing a perovskite ceramic material is studied and the corresponding output voltages, electric power and natural frequencies are analyzed in different conditions.