Prakasha Chigahalli Ramegowda

• Ph.D.
• Scientist at Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)

A thin triple-layer piezoelectric bender, also known as a piezoelectric bimorph with a metal shim, consists of an elastic layer (metal shim) sandwiched between two piezoelectric layers. It is one of the most commonly used piezoelectric composite structures in both sensing and actuation applications. Therefore, this study deals with the coupled piez...

A R T I C L E I N F O Keywords: Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) Coupled algorithm Block Gauss-Seidel (BGS) method Piezoelectric effect Electromechanical coupling Electric field-structure interaction Piezoelectric bimorph actuator and sensor A B S T R A C T Thin piezoelectric bimorph cantilever is increasingly employed throughout the field of...

This work presents multiphysics numerical analysis of piezoelectric actuators realized using the finite element method (FEM) and their performances to analyze the structure-electric interaction in three-dimensional (3D) piezoelectric continua. Here, we choose the piezoelectric bimorph actuator without the metal shim and with the metal shim as low-f...

Piezoelectric bimorph for actuators and sensors is usually thin and includes conductor layers such as the electrode and the shim plate. Therefore, this study deals with the coupled piezoelectric and inverse-piezoelectric analysis of thin piezoelectric bimorph with the conductor layers. Solid elements can describe the various types of distributions...

This work presents an experimental comparative analysis of acoustic performance for series and parallel connected piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducers (PMUTs) designed and fabricated in physical vapor deposition (PVD) lead zirconate titanate (PZT) and 20% scandium (Sc)-doped aluminum nitride (AlN). The aim of this research is to provi...

Multilayered flexible piezoelectric energy harvesting devices (FPEDs) are a new future harvesting technology which are highly flexible and lightweight than familiar cantilever piezo-electric energy harvesters. This mechanical vibration driven FPED is a strongly coupled multiphysics phenomena that involve complex natural three-way interaction among...

This paper demonstrates the importance of three-dimensional (3-D) piezoelectric coupling in the electromechanical behavior of piezoelectric devices using three-dimensional finite element analyses based on weak and strong coupling models for a thin cantilevered piezoelectric bimorph actuator. It is found that there is a significant difference betwee...

We present a method to extract transverse elastic properties (Young’s modulus, shear modulus and Poisson’s ratio) and relative permittivity of 15% scandium (Sc) doped aluminum nitride (AlN) film from electrical measurements of resonators and parallel plate capacitors. The resonators comprise a vertical stack of 0.3μm thick Sc0.15Al0.85N being sandw...

Thin flexible piezoelectric energy harvesting devices (FPED) are a new future harvesting technology which are highly flexible and lightweight than the familiar cantilever piezoelectric energy harvesters. This mechanical vibration driven FPED is a strongly coupled multiphysics phenomena that involve interaction between the piezoelectric structure, t...

Piezoelectric-structure interaction (PSI) and fluid-structure interaction (FSI) are multi-physics coupled systems. These interactions affect the vibration characteristics of coupled systems and thus such complex coupled systems must be controlled. This paper proposes computational control based on the finite element method for strongly coupled mult...

This paper presents a feasibility step in the development of an insect-inspired flapping wing nano air vehicle using advanced engineering technologies such as microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technologies. To develop an insect-inspired flapping wing nano air vehicle, a one-wing polymer micromachined transmission is proposed in this paper. The...

The key to the design of advanced micro electro–mechanical devices is an accurate evaluation of the circuit-integrated piezoelectric oscillator that accounts for its complicated configuration. Here, the direct numerical modeling of this oscillator leads to a general formulation as a structure–piezoelectric–circuit interaction. Hence, this study dev...

The successful design of a thin piezoelectric bimorph device for sensor and actu-ator applications requires an efficient and accurate finite element modeling (FEM) of direct and inverse piezoelectric effects. In this work, a partitioned iterative method utilizing the best features of the solid elements for the direct-piezoelectric field and MITC sh...

Thin piezoelectric bimorphs are often used as actuators and sensors in advanced electromechanical systems. Therefore, it is necessary to accurately evaluate their electromechanical behaviors. In this study, the finite element analysis results for the deflection of piezoelectric bimorphs are compared with the analytical solutions based on the beam t...

Various coupled algorithms are possible for the structure-piezoelectric-circuit interaction in piezoelectric bimorph energy harvesters. Hence, in this study, we propose a partitioned iterative algorithm using an explicit time marching method for the electric circuit and compare it to that using an implicit time marching method for solving the elect...

Various coupled algorithms are possible for the structure-piezoelectric-circuit interaction in piezoelectric bimorph energy harvesters. In this study, we propose a coupled algorithm using an explicit method for solving the electric circuit, and compare it with that using an implicit method for solving the electric circuit in terms of the accuracy a...

Keywords: Hierarchical decomposition Strongly coupled partitioned iterative method Finite element method Structure-piezoelectric-circuit interaction Flexible piezoelectric energy harvesting device (FPED) Abstract. The piezoelectric energy harvesting devices for the conversion of mechanical vibration into electric energy via a flexible piezoelectric...

In recent years, energy harvesting from environment has attracted much attention. In particular, piezoelectric bimorph energy harvesters, which are effective as an energy source for MEMS, have been widely studied. In piezoelectric energy harvesters, structure, piezoelectricity, and circuit are strongly coupled in a complicated and hierarchical mann...

Piezoelectric bimorphs in actuator and sensor applications are usually connected to an external circuit. The mechanical behavior of the piezoelectric bimorph is affected by charge from the circuit, and it behaves as a kind of capacitor in the circuit. Therefore, the interaction between the electrical circuit and piezoelectric bimorph forms the mult...

The piezoelectric energy harvesting devices for the conversion of mechanical vibration into electric energy via a flexible piezoelectric energy harvesting (FPED) structure have gained greater attention. Here, the large deformation of the FPED structure causes a strong interaction with the electric field (direct-piezoelectric effect) and structural...

Piezoelectric bimorphs are connected to an external electric circuit in their sensor applications such as the energy harvester, where the inverse piezoelectric-direct piezoelectric-electric circuit coupling is formed. This triply coupling should be taken into account in the design process of the energy harvesting system. Here, the novel numerical m...

This paper proposes a finite element method (FEM) for piezoelectric-structure interaction with active control. Direct Velocity plus Displacement FeedBack (DVDFB) control is employed to investigate the vibration characteristics of piezoelectric bimorph actuator. Further, we proposes a FEM of the piezoelectric bimorph with voltage control and Fluid-S...

Piezoelectric energy harvesting from the mechanical vibrations has attracted considerable research interest in the last decade. This work presents a finite element modeling of forced vibration of flexible piezoelectric devices (FPED). The successful design of the FPED depends on the identification of the optimal geometry, material configurations, a...

Piezoelectric-structure-fluid interaction is a complex multiphysics coupled phenomena appears wherein piezoelectric devices are in contact or surrounded by the fluid media. The piezoelectric energy harvesting using ocean waves, wind flow, and mechanical vibrations are some of the popular energy savaging methods wherein thin piezoelectric bimorphs s...

In this study, the coupled solid piezoelectric and shell inverse-piezoelectric analysis method for a thin piezoelectric bimorph with metal layers is proposed. The piezoelectric bimorph is usually thin and includes the metal layers such as the electrode and the shim plate. In the proposed method, the solid and shell elements are used for the piezoel...

A piezoelectric bimorph for actuators and sensors is usually connected to a circuit. The piezoelectric bimorph is affected by charge from the circuit in its mechanical behavior, and it also plays a role of a capacitor in the circuit. Therefore, the coupling of the piezoelectric bimorph and circuit as well as the structure - piezoelectric coupling s...

In general, piezoelectric bimorph for actuators and sensors is thin and includes electrodes and shim plates. Therefore, this study deals with the thin composite piezoelectric bimorph. Solid elements can describe the various type of distributions of electric potential over the thickness. However, shell elements are more appropriate for the thin stru...

Electric and Fluid-Structure interaction (EFSI) is a complex coupled multi-physics phenomenon appears in microelectromechanical system (MEMS) when these microdevices are operated in a fluid media. In this study, the EFSI phenomena refer to a combination of elec-tromechanical (electric-structure interaction) coupling and fluid-structure interaction...

In general, piezoelectric bimorph for actuators and sensors is thin and includes electrodes and shim plates. Therefore, this study deals with the thin composite piezoelectric bimorph. Solid elements can describe the various type of distributions of electric potential over the thickness. However, shell elements are more appropriate for the thin stru...

A strongly coupled multiphysics analysis of the electric-structure-fluid interaction in micro electro mechanical system (MEMS) using the finite element method is presented. The strongly coupled electric-structure interaction is based on the block Gauss-Seidel (BGS) iteration scheme, while the strongly coupled structure-fluid interaction is based on...

In this analyze, a novel finite element coupled algorithm using numerical methods to analyze the interaction between fluid-structure-electric fields has been presented for piezoelectric actuators. Piezoelectricity is fundamentally an interaction between structure and electric fields. In this paper, at first, we analyze the piezoelectric interaction...

In this study, we developed a finite element coupled algorithm for shell structure-electric field interaction analysis of piezoelectric based actuators. The finite element coupled algorithm is based on Block Gauss-Seidel partitioned iterative coupling scheme with full Newton-Rapson equilibrium iterations and Newmark's time integration method (BGSN)...

In this paper, we compare the performance of monolithic coupling with Newmark's integration, Block Jacobi partitioned iterative coupling with Newmark's integration, Block Gauss Seidel partitioned iterative coupling with Newmark's integration and partitioned coupling with central difference integration procedures for the numerical analysis of struct...