One-dimensional phononic crystal fiber for energy harvesting application

In this paper, a novel one-dimensional (1D) phononic crystal fiber with conical entrance has been proposed for energy harvesting application. The cladding part of the phononic fiber is 1D phononic crystal which is included 4 layers of steel and 3 layers of epoxy resin materials. Also, an epoxy resin rod has been considered as core. The energy harvesting working frequency is 50 kHz, so in the first step, we focus on designing the 1D phononic crystal. Next, optimized 1D phononic crystal has been selected as phononic crystal cladding. The most important parameter to adjust the working frequency of phononic fiber is the radius of core. For obtaining the electrical output, a piezoelectric film is considered at the end of phononic crystal fiber. A conical entrance is designed to couple the acoustic wave from environment to core region. Simulation of structure has been done by finite element method. Achieved results show that incident acoustic waves can confine in the core region. The comparison of output voltage with the bare case shows a 70 times enhancement for the proposed structure.