L-shape triple defects in a phononic crystal for broadband piezoelectric energy harvesting.

This study proposes a phononic crystal (PnC) with triple defects in an L-shape arrangement for broadband piezoelectric energy harvesting (PEH). The incorporation of defects in PnCs has attracted significant attention in PEH fields owing to properties such as energy localization and amplification near the defect. Several studies have been conducted to enhance output electric power of PnC-based PEH systems with single defects. However, it is susceptible to the limitations of narrow bandwidth. Recently, double-defect-incorporated systems have been proposed to widen the PEH bandwidth via defect-band splitting. Nevertheless, the PEH performance rapidly decreases in the frequency range between the split defect bands. The limitations of single- and double-defect-incorporated systems can be resolved by the incorporation of the proposed design concept, called the L-shape triple defects in a PnC. The isolated single defect at the top vertex of the letter 'L' compensates for the limitations of double-defect-incorporated systems, whereas the double defects at the bottom vertices compensate for the limitations of the single-defect-incorporated systems. Hence, the proposed design can effectively confine and harvest elastic-wave energy over broadband frequencies while enhancing the application of single and double defects. The effectiveness of the proposed design concept is numerically validated using the finite element method. In the case of a circular hole-type PnC, it is verified that the PnC with L-shape triple defects broadens the bandwidth, and improves the output voltage and electric power compared with those of single- and double-defect-incorporated systems. This study expands the design space of defect-incorporated PnCs and might shed light on other engineering applications of the frequency detector and elastic wave power transfer.

Double defects-induced elastic wave coupling and energy localization in a phononic crystal.

This study aims to investigate elastic wave localization that leverages defect band splitting in a phononic crystal with double defects through in-depth analysis of comparison of numerical and experimental results. When more than one defect is created inside a phononic crystal, these defects can interact with each other, resulting in a distinctive physical phenomenon from a single defect case: defect band splitting. For a phononic crystal consisting of circular-hole type unit cells in a thin aluminum plate, under A0 (the lowest antisymmetric) Lamb waves, both numerical simulations and experiments successfully confirm the defect band splitting phenomenon via frequency response functions for the out-of-plane displacement calculated/measured at the double defects within a finite distance. Furthermore, experimental visualization of in-phase and out-of-phase defect mode shapes at each frequency of the split defect bands is achieved and found to be in excellent agreement with the simulated results. Different inter-distance combinations of the double defects reveal that the degree of the defect band splitting decreases with  the increasing distance due to weaker coupling between the defects. This work may shed light on engineering applications of a multiple-defect-introduced phononic crystal, including broadband energy harvesting, frequency detectors, and elastic wireless power transfer.