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Chase Ray successfully defended his Masters of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering entitled “Piezoelectret Foam in a Multilayer Stack Configuration for Vibration Energy Harvesting” on April 14, 2015.  Congratulations Chase!

Abstract:

Electronic devices are high demand commodities in today’s world, and such devices will continue increasing in popularity. Currently, batteries are implemented to provide power to these devices; however, the need for battery replacement, their cost, and the waste associated with battery disposal present a need for advances in self- powered technology. Energy harvesting technology has great potential to alleviate the drawbacks of batteries. In this work, a novel piezoelectret foam material is investigated for low-level vibration energy harvesting. Specifically, piezoelectret foam assembled in a multilayer stack configuration is explored. Modeling and experimentation of the stack behavior when excited in compression at low frequencies are performed to investigate piezoelectret foam as a multilayer energy harvester. An examination of modeling piezoelectret foam as a stack with an equivalent circuit is made following recently published work and is used in this study. Two 20-layer prototype devices and a 40-layer prototype device are fabricated and experimentally tested via harmonic base excitation. Electromechanical testing is performed by compressing the foam stacks to obtain output electrical energy; consequently, allowing the frequency response between input mechanical energy and output electrical energy to be developed. Modeling results are compared to the experimental measurements to assess the fidelity of the model at resonance. Lastly, energy harvesting experimentation in which the devices are subject to harmonic base excitation at the natural frequency is conducted to determine the ability of the piezoelectret foam stack to successfully charge a capacitor. For a 20-layer stack, a 100 F capacitor is charged to 1.45 V in fifteen minutes, and produces a peak power of 0.45 W. A 40-layer stack can charge a 100 F to 1.7 V in iffteen minutes, and produce a peak power of 0.89 W.

DSSL researchers Chase Ray and Cesar Contreras received Best Poster Awards at the 2015 TTU Student Research Day.  Chase presented a poster titled “Evaluation of Piezoelectret Foam in Stack Configuration for Low-Level Vibration Energy Harvesting” and Cesar presented a poster titled “Finite Element Modeling of Embedded Piezoelectrics in Knee Replacements Bearings.”  Congratulations Chase and Cesar!

DSSL researchers Brooke Wilson, Chase Ray, April Parkison, and Cesar Contreras presented posters at the 2015 TTU Student Research Day on April 9, 2015.  The event is an effort to emphasize the significance of research in postsecondary education; and to recognize the diverse areas of research unique to the different disciplines.  Participants from all colleges in the university are welcome to present their research.

Dr. Anton has been selected for the 2015 Air Force Summer Faculty Fellowship Program (AF SFFP).  This program, sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), allows faculty to gain first-hand exposure to Air Force research challenges through summer residencies at participating Air Force research facilities.  Dr. Anton, along with DSSL MS student, Ryan Kettle, will spend 10 weeks this summer at Eglin Air Force Base performing research in the Munitions Directorate on a proposal titled “Real-Time Monitoring of Structures under Highly Dynamics Environments”.

DSSL presents two technical papers at the 2015 SPIE Smart Structures & Nondestructive Evaluation conference held March 9-12, 2015 in San Diego, CA

• Wilson, B. E., Meneghini, R. M., and Anton, S. R., Embedded Piezoelectrics for Sensing and Energy Harvesting in Total Knee Replacement Units, Proc. SPIE, 2015, Vol. 9431, 943111E (10 pp.)
• Ray, C. A. and Anton, S. R., Evaluation of Piezoelectret Foam in a Multilayer Stack Configuration for Low-Level Vibration Energy Harvesting Applications, Proc. SPIE, 2015, Vol. 9431, 943111 (11 pp.)

DSSL undergraduate researcher April Parkison was awarded the Rising Renaissance Engineer Spectrum Award for Mechanical Engineering at the 2015 Engineer’s Week banquet on February 26, 2015. The Rising Renaissance Engineer Spectrum Award recognizes a diverse body of students across all the degree-granting departments in the College of Engineering for their initiatives and achievements in educational, research, and professional development activities. Congratulations April!

Dr. Anton and Ryan Kettle volunteered as a referees at the 2014 FIRST Lego League East Tennessee Championship event held at Tennessee Tech.  FIRST Lego League is an exciting STEM robotics program for small teams of students ages 9 to 16.  Teams build unique robots using LEGO MINDSTORMS technology to solve a set of missions in the Robot Game.  The 2014 Challenge was called World Class.  There were about 40 teams from all over Tennessee in attendance.  Click for more information on FIRST!

DSSL welcomes two undergraduate URECA! (Undergraduate REsearch and Creative Activity) grant winners, April Parkison and Cesar Contreras, to the lab.  The title of April and Cesar’s research project is “Feasibility Analysis of Piezoelectric Materials in Knee Replacements.”

Dr. Anton presented an invited lecture titled “Project-Based Learning Approaches for Cyber-Physical Systems Education” to the National Academies of Science in Washington DC at the Workshop on 21st Century Cyber-Physical Systems Education organized by the National Science Foundation held on October 3, 2014.

Dr. Anton has been named the Energy Harvesting Symposium Co-Chair for the 2015 ASME Smart Materials, Adaptive Structures, and Intelligent Systems conference.  The conference will be held in Colorado Springs, CO from September 21-23, 2015.