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Machines
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Applications of Piezoelectric Devices and Materials
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Applications of Piezoelectric Devices and Materials

A special issue of Machines (ISSN 2075-1702). This special issue belongs to the section "Micro/Nano Electromechanical Systems (MEMS/NEMS)".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 August 2025 | Viewed by 5390

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Fangzhou Xia

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Mechanical Engineering Department, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Cambridge, MA, USA
Interests: mechatronics; robotics; controls; instrumentation; biomedical devices; physical/computational intelligence
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Stefano Mariani

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile e Ambientale, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza L. da Vinci 32, 20133 Milano, Italy
Interests: MEMS; smart materials; micromechanics; machine learning-driven materials modeling
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Materials with piezoelectric effects can convert energy between mechanical and electrical domains. This can help to create novel devices for sensing, actuation and energy-harvesting applications. Piezoelectric materials have many attractive properties such as high voltage to strain ratio and high force per unit area. Additionally, are compatible with the cryogenic vacuum environment. These properties have made piezoelectric transducers useful in many precision machines for nano-positioning, strain sensing, vibration energy collection, etc. Conversely, care must be taken in engineering applications to deal with the inherent non-linearities of piezoelectric transducers including e.g. hysteresis, creep, charge leakage, varying capacitance. Significant research efforts have been devoted to creating phenomenological or lumped parameter system models to handle undesirable behaviors. To realize the full potential of piezoelectric devices, advanced model-based or data-driven techniques can be applied throughout the process of transducer design, application-specific integration and performance optimization.

This Special Issue aims to collect novel applications of piezoelectric materials in mechatronic systems and robotics, putting an emphasis on the practical aspects of modeling, fabrication, integration, driving, associated signal processing and control methods for performance improvement.

Dr. Fangzhou Xia
Dr. Stefano Mariani
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Machines is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • piezoelectric materials
  • transducers
  • nano-positioning
  • motion control
  • sensing
  • energy harvasting
  • non-linearity modeling
  • precision engineering
  • mechatronic systems
  • power electronics

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

21 pages, 10788 KiB  
Article
Resilient Reinforcement Learning for Voltage Control in an Islanded DC Microgrid Integrating Data-Driven Piezoelectric
by Kouhyar Sheida, Mohammad Seyedi, Muhammad Ali Afridi, Farzad Ferdowsi, Mohammad J. Khattak, Vijaya K. Gopu and Tyson Rupnow
Machines 2024, 12(10), 694; https://doi.org/10.3390/machines12100694 - 1 Oct 2024
Viewed by 818
Abstract
This research study presents a resilient control scheme for an islanded DC microgrid (DC MG) integrating solar photovoltaic (PV), battery storage (BESS), and piezoelectric (PE) energy harvesting modules. The microgrid (MG) case study represents an energy hub designed to provide electricity for lighting [...] Read more.
This research study presents a resilient control scheme for an islanded DC microgrid (DC MG) integrating solar photovoltaic (PV), battery storage (BESS), and piezoelectric (PE) energy harvesting modules. The microgrid (MG) case study represents an energy hub designed to provide electricity for lighting systems in transportation, roads, and other infrastructure. To enhance practicality, the PE is modeled using the real data captured from a traffic simulator. The proposed reinforcement learning (RL) method was tested against four severe and unexpected failure scenarios, including short circuit at the load side, sudden and severe change of load, open circuit, and converter failure. The performance of the controller was quantitatively compared with a conventional PI controller. The results show marginal improvement in one scenario and significant improvement in the other three, suggesting that the proposed scheme is a robust candidate for microgrids with high levels of uncertainty, such as those involving solar and PE harvesters. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Applications of Piezoelectric Devices and Materials)
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10 pages, 2876 KiB  
Article
Truss Metamaterials: Multi-Physics Modeling for Band GapTuning
by Daniel Calegaro and Stefano Mariani
Machines 2023, 11(9), 913; https://doi.org/10.3390/machines11090913 - 17 Sep 2023
Viewed by 1225
Abstract
Periodic elastic metamaterials (EMMs) display the capability to forbid the transmission of elastic waves for certain frequency ranges, leading to band gaps. If topology optimization strategies are exploited to tune the band gaps of EMMs, the said band gaps cannot be modified in [...] Read more.
Periodic elastic metamaterials (EMMs) display the capability to forbid the transmission of elastic waves for certain frequency ranges, leading to band gaps. If topology optimization strategies are exploited to tune the band gaps of EMMs, the said band gaps cannot be modified in real-time. This limitation can be overcome by allowing for active materials in the design of EMMs. In this work, a hyperelastic piezoelectric composite was considered to assess the coupled effects of material and geometric nonlinearities on the behavior of sculptured microstructures featuring a three-dimensional periodicity. Specifically, it was assumed that the composite material is obtained by embedding piezo nanoparticles into a soft polymeric matrix. In this way, piezoelectricity and instability-induced pattern transformation could be fully exploited to actively tune the band gaps. A thermodynamically consistent multi-physics model for the active composite material is discussed and implemented in a general-purpose finite-element code. The reported results of the simulations showed how the band gaps are affected by the aforementioned nonlinearities and by a feature of the architected periodic cell linked to its topology. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Applications of Piezoelectric Devices and Materials)
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19 pages, 7409 KiB  
Article
Field Evaluation of Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters on Bridge Structure
by Lukai Guo, Hao Wang, John Braley and Giri Venkiteela
Machines 2023, 11(4), 462; https://doi.org/10.3390/machines11040462 - 7 Apr 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2113
Abstract
This study aims to develop and evaluate vibration-based piezoelectric energy harvesters for generating power from a bridge structure. New designs of multiple-degree-of-freedom (DOF) cantilevers were proposed and evaluated in a laboratory and on a full-scale bridge. It was found that all cantilever designs [...] Read more.
This study aims to develop and evaluate vibration-based piezoelectric energy harvesters for generating power from a bridge structure. New designs of multiple-degree-of-freedom (DOF) cantilevers were proposed and evaluated in a laboratory and on a full-scale bridge. It was found that all cantilever designs showed potential of generating 35 V voltage outputs under a simple sinusoidal vibration scenario in the laboratory. Field testing results showed that the match between the vibration frequencies of bridge structure and the resonant frequencies of cantilevers significantly affected the voltage output from the piezoelectric energy harvester under moving tire loads. Through adding more DOF on the same cantilever, the voltage attenuation from peaks generated by the cantilever turned to be less significant after each load passing, leading to greater energy outputs in some cases. With adjusting the mass combination in the 3-DOF cantilever design, the voltage output and energy production reached 11.1 V and 58.2 μJ under one single loading pulse, respectively, which was higher than 9.2 V and 14.9 μJ obtained from the best scenario of 1-DOF cantilevers. The study findings indicate the potential of developing multi-band piezoelectric energy harvesters for harvesting energy from bridge vibrations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Applications of Piezoelectric Devices and Materials)
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