Ricerc@Sapienza

The use of advanced sensing systems can facilitate the remote health and serviceability survey of existing infrastructures. In particular, the large number of footbridges built in many countries can greatly benefit from the implementation of smart technological solutions for data transmission and power management. Within this framework, the present paper is con-cerned with the possibility of using piezoelectric energy harvesters as electrical power source for wireless sensor nodes installed on footbridges.

The possibility of adopting vibration-powered wireless sensors for structural monitoring applications has received great attention in the last few years. Therefore, the development of effective computational approaches in this field is of paramount importance in order to evalu-ate the feasibility of such technology and to improve current design procedures. In this per-spective, the present paper illustrates an efficient approach for the electromechanical probabilistic analysis and design of piezoelectric energy harvesters subjected to modulated and filtered white Gaussian noise (WGN).

This paper proposes a comprehensive method for the electromechanical probabilistic analysis of piezoelectric energy harvesters subjected to modulated and filtered white Gaussian noise (WGN) at the base. Specifically, the dynamic excitation is simulated by means of an amplitude-modulated WGN, which is filtered through the Clough-Penzien filter.

The possibility of adopting vibration-powered wireless nodes has been largely investigated in the last years. Among the available technologies based on the piezoelectric effect, the most common ones consist of a vibrating beam covered by electroactive layers. Another energy harvesting strategy is based on the use of piezoelectric strips attached to a hosting structure subjected to dynamic loads. The hosting structure, for example, can be the system to be equipped with wireless nodes. Such strategy has received few attentions so far and no analytical studies have been presented yet.