Underwater energy harvesting from vibrations of annular ionic polymer metal composites

In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of energy harvesting from axisymmetric vibrations of annular ionic polymer metal composites (IPMCs). We consider an in-house fabricated IPMC that is clamped at its inner radius to a moving base and is free at its outer radius. We propose a physics-based model for energy harvesting from underwater vibrations, in which the IPMC is described as a thin annular plate undergoing axisymmetric vibrations with an added mass due to the encompassing fluid. Experiments are performed to elucidate the effect of the shunting resistance and the excitation frequency on energy harvesting.