Study of Honeycomb Layering in Multi-plane Configuration for Vibrational Energy Harvesting

Vibration Energy harvesting converts renewable energy, ambient kinetic energy mostly generated from unwanted mechanical parts vibration or human motion into electrical energy. The honeycomb beam has shown promising results with better vibrational dynamics compared to other shapes or geometry. Dynamical deflection is one of the main factors for effective vibration energy harvesting which depends on the stiffness of the structure. This research aimed to investigate the frequency response of honeycomb beam in single layer and double layers configurations with different thicknesses and out-of-plane orientation layout. Multi-plane configuration allows the manipulation of the vibrational amplitude to weight ratio for better adaptability to suit different applications. Simulation and experiment were conducted to investigate and compare the dynamical amplitude and natural frequency. The double layers honeycomb beams have higher natural frequencies as compared to single layer for the same thickness. The vibrational amplitude decreases with thickness for the same layering configuration due to stiffness. Double layer orientation could potentially provide higher amplitude-to-weight ratio, therefore power as compared to single layer with weight manipulation in its configuration.