This research considers the fundamental frequency of cantilever beams. The study includes new insight on the free vibrations of a simple elastic beam, and an analysis of the steady vibration response of piezoelectric vibrating energy harvester (PVEH) cantilever unimorphs.
Vibrating cantilever beams are a fundamental building block in many sensor devices, such as atomic force microscopes, sensors of biological and chemical substances, gyroscopes and many more.
In this study we investigate the effects of beam width and Poisson ratio, on the fundamental frequency of a resonating cantilever beam. We show that the fundamental frequency increases with increasing beam width, and with an increase of the Poisson ratio. Our investigation suggests that this increase in fundamental frequency should be attributed to a decrease in effective inertia rather than an increase in stiffness.
