Title:
Energy Harvesting Cementitious Materials through Nanofiber Incorporations
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Web Session
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Date:
10/25/2020
Abstract:
The concept of harvesting energy through regenerative power technologies has drawn much attention over the past few decades. Civil infrastructures can provide massive opportunity for using piezoelectric materials to harvest energy of largescale vibrations and/or deformation of structures. Piezoelectric materials have a high energy density, which can directly convert the mechanical energy to electricity. Among the piezoelectric materials, Polyvinylidene Difluoride (PVDF) nanofiber is a popular flexible piezoelectric polymer owing to its remarkable piezoelectric coefficient and high ductility. In this study, high ductile fiber reinforced cementitious materials incorporating flexible PVDF nanofiber has been investigated as an innovative energy harvesting system to scavenge energy from mechanical deflection of ductile cementitious materials. To evaluate the energy conversion efficiency and voltage output, synchronous flexural test and voltage data recordings were employed. The energy harvesting performance was analyzed with various loading rates of four-point bending and different configuration of PVDF nanofiber. The results have shown that high testing loading rates and long length PVDF are favorable for energy harvesting. The experimental outcomes lay a solid foundation to the development of multi-functional building materials for energy harvesting applications.