Piezoelectric-based Power Converters
Power electronics are integral to the advancement of transportation, renewable energy, manufacturing, healthcare, information technology, and many other major industries. These technologies increasingly demand power electronics with smaller volume, lighter weight, and lower cost, but such strides are commonly impeded by energy storage components, particularly magnetics. While magnetic components have been central to power electronics since the field's inception, their inherent challenges at small scales motivate investigation of alternative energy storage mechanisms for future miniaturized power conversion. Piezoelectrics, which store energy in the mechanical compliance and inertia of a piezoelectric material, is one such prospect; piezoelectrics show immense promise for high power density and efficiency at small scales.
In this talk, we explore how we can leverage piezoelectrics to enable substantial miniaturization of power electronics. We first identify practical dc-dc converter implementations that most efficiently utilize piezoelectrics as sole energy storage components, without magnetics. Then, we turn to the piezoelectric components themselves and evaluate piezoelectric materials, vibration modes, and geometries based on efficiency and power density capabilities. We further discuss how these capabilities scale to small sizes and how piezoelectric-based converters may pave the way for major advances in converter miniaturization.
Date and Time
Location
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Registration
- Date: 18 May 2022
- Time: 06:00 PM to 07:30 PM
- All times are (GMT-05:00) US/Eastern
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- Detroit, Michigan
- United States
- Starts 05 May 2022 05:00 AM
- Ends 18 May 2022 06:00 PM
- All times are (GMT-05:00) US/Eastern
- No Admission Charge
Speakers
Jessica Boles of Massachusetts Institute of Technology Power Electronics Research Group
Biography:
Jessica Boles is a PhD candidate in the Power Electronics Research Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She completed her B.S. ('15) and M.S. ('17) degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she developed a battery storage system emulator for a power-electronics-based grid testbed. At MIT, her research spans power converter topologies, passive components, and control techniques, and her present work focuses on how to leverage piezoelectric passive components to substantially miniaturize power conversion. Over the past three years, she has built and managed a team of five undergraduate and Masters-level student researchers, each with their own piezo-based-converter projects. Outside of research, she has co-chaired academic events and led several initiatives for promoting women in engineering and improving graduate student experience.