System Reliability Analysis for Multiple Failure Modes of Piezoelectric Energy Harvester Using Generalized Complementary Intersection Method

Generalized Complementary Intersection Method를 이용한 압전 에너지 수확 장치의 다중 파손모드에 대한 시스템 신뢰성 해석

Energy harvesting technology, which scavenges electric power from ambient, otherwise wasted, energy sources, has been explored to develop self-powered wireless sensors and possibly eliminate the battery replacement cost for wireless sensors. Among ambient energy sources, vibration energy can be converted into electric power through a piezoelectric energy harvester. For the last decade, although tremendous advances have been made in design methodology to maximize harvestable electric power under a given vibration condition, the research in reliability assessment to ensure durability has been stagnant due to the complicated nature of the multiple failure modes of a piezoelectric energy harvester, such as the interfacial delamination, fatigue failure, and dynamic fracture. Therefore, this study presents the first-ever system reliability analysis for multiple failure modes of a piezoelectric energy harvester using the Generalized Complementary Intersection Method (GCIM), while accounts for the energy conversion performance. The GCIM enables to decompose the probabilities of high-order joint failure events into probabilities of complementary intersection events. The electromechanically-coupled analytical model is implemented based on the Kirchhoff plate theory to analyze its output performances of a piezoelectric energy harvester. Since a durable as well as efficient design of a piezoelectric energy harvester is significantly important in sustainably utilizing self-powered electronics, we believe that technical development on system reliability analysis will have an immediate and major impact on piezoelectric energy harvesting technology.