Enhancing the Output Power of a Piezoelectric Energy Harvester by Reducing the Effect of the Internal Capacitance Using Inductance

Author(s):  
Anahita Zargarani ◽  
S. Nima Mahmoodi

This paper describes an innovative method for enhancing the power output of a piezoelectric energy harvester. The proposed approach is adopting inductance to reduce the effect of the internal capacitance of the piezoelectric harvester to boost the power output. Four electrical circuits for a piezoelectric beam harvester are studied; Simple Resistive Load (SRL), Inductive Load (IL), Standard AC-DC, and Inductive AC-DC circuits. An inductor is added to the SRL and standard AC-DC circuits to build the new IL and Inductive AC-DC circuits respectively. The power outputs of the four circuits are then studied. The results show that the adaptation of inductor enhances the power output. The IL circuit enhances the power output comparing to the SRL circuit. The Inductive AC-DC circuit also avails the standard AC-DC circuit.

Author(s):  
Anahita Zargarani ◽  
S. Nima Mahmoodi

This paper investigates an experimental approach for enhancing the output power of a piezoelectric energy harvester. The proposed method adopts inductance to reduce the effect of the piezoelectric harvester’s impedance, and boost the output power. Four electrical circuits for a piezoelectric beam harvester are investigated experimentally; Simple Resistive Load (SRL), Inductive Load (IL), Standard AC-DC, and Inductive AC-DC circuits. The results show that the adaptation of inductor in the IL and Inductive AC-DC improves the output power compared to the SRL and Standard AC-DC respectively. The Inductive AC-DC circuit is shown to increase the output power by 6.7% in comparison to the existing standard AC-DC circuits.


Author(s):  
Xiaobiao Shan ◽  
Haigang Tian ◽  
Tao Xie

This paper presents a piezoelectric harvester array with three identical energy harvesting vibrators (EHVs) arranged in series along the water flow direction. Each EHV consists of a piezoelectric beam and an interference cylinder. Three serial EHVs are placed upright in the water channel. Prototypes of three EHVs are fabricated and experiments are conducted to explore the vibration response and harvesting performance. The experimental results demonstrated that three EHVs in the array show the obvious difference in excitation vibration and harvesting performance over single EHV. The lock-in frequency of three EHVs can be enhanced by the EHV array, and the speed bandwidth can be greatly broadened by accounting for 66.9%. The harvesting performance of upstream EHV (EHV-1) and downstream EHV (EHV-3) is significantly improved by the EHV array over single EHV. While, midstream EHV (EHV-2) shows an inhibitory effect to some extent. The overall harvesting performance in the EHV array can be increased by up to 36.23% compared with single EHV in certain spacing distances. The proposed EHV array shows the better harvesting ability over the previous harvesters. This work provides a comprehensive experimental guideline for further designing efficient harvester array used in low-speed water environment.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. p6
Author(s):  
Anahita Zargarani ◽  
S. Nima Mahmoodi

In this paper, a new method is proposed for improving a piezoelectric energy harvester’s output power. A piezoelectric vibration energy harvester has an inherent internal capacitance. The new approach adopts inductance to reduce the reactance of the internal capacitance and enhance the output power. To show the practicality of this method, four electrical circuits are investigated numerically and experimentally for a piezoelectric beam energy harvester: Simple Resistive Load, Inductive Load, standard AC-DC, and Inductive AC-DC circuits. An Inductive Load circuit is built by adding an inductor to a Simple Resistive Load circuit, while an Inductive AC-DC circuit is built by adding an inductor to a standard AC-DC circuit. Experimental results indicate that the Inductive Load and the Inductive AC-DC circuits avail the Simple Resistive Load and standard AC-DC circuits respectively. The inductive AC-DC circuit shows a 6.7% increase in the output power compared to the standard AC-DC circuit.


2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (9) ◽  
pp. 1875-1883 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shan Zeng ◽  
Chunwei Zhang ◽  
Kaifa Wang ◽  
Baolin Wang ◽  
Li Sun

Unimorph piezoelectric energy harvesters are typically a unimorph cantilever beam located on a vibrating host structure. Delamination is one of the major failure modes of such unimorph cantilevers and therefore is studied in this article. The delaminated cantilever unimorph is modeled with one through-width crack using four Euler beams connected at delamination edges. The governing equations, the corresponding boundary conditions, and the kinematic continuity conditions are derived based on the Hamiltonian principle. The solutions of the voltage and power output for the present model are derived. The influence of the position and the length of the delamination, frequency of input base excitation, and load resistance on the voltage and power output are discussed in detail. The results show that delamination in the unimorph of the energy harvester will impressively decrease the voltage and power outputs. Influences of the delamination located at the free end of the cantilever are more obvious. For a given active length of the delaminated cantilever energy harvester, it is useful to increase the overall length of the cantilever to obtain a higher voltage and power outputs.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (11) ◽  
pp. 3861
Author(s):  
Jie Mei ◽  
Qiong Fan ◽  
Lijie Li ◽  
Dingfang Chen ◽  
Lin Xu ◽  
...  

With the rapid development of wearable electronics, novel power solutions are required to adapt to flexible surfaces for widespread applications, thus flexible energy harvesters have been extensively studied for their flexibility and stretchability. However, poor power output and insufficient sensitivity to environmental changes limit its widespread application in engineering practice. A doubly clamped flexible piezoelectric energy harvester (FPEH) with axial excitation is therefore proposed for higher power output in a low-frequency vibration environment. Combining the Euler–Bernoulli beam theory and the D’Alembert principle, the differential dynamic equation of the doubly clamped energy harvester is derived, in which the excitation mode of axial load with pre-deformation is considered. A numerical solution of voltage amplitude and average power is obtained using the Rayleigh–Ritz method. Output power of 22.5 μW at 27.1 Hz, with the optimal load resistance being 1 MΩ, is determined by the frequency sweeping analysis. In order to power electronic devices, the converted alternating electric energy should be rectified into direct current energy. By connecting to the MDA2500 standard rectified electric bridge, a rectified DC output voltage across the 1 MΩ load resistor is characterized to be 2.39 V. For further validation of the mechanical-electrical dynamical model of the doubly clamped flexible piezoelectric energy harvester, its output performances, including both its frequency response and resistance load matching performances, are experimentally characterized. From the experimental results, the maximum output power is 1.38 μW, with a load resistance of 5.7 MΩ at 27 Hz, and the rectified DC output voltage reaches 1.84 V, which shows coincidence with simulation results and is proved to be sufficient for powering LED electronics.


2016 ◽  
Vol 09 (05) ◽  
pp. 1650069 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yaoze Liu ◽  
Tongqing Yang ◽  
Fangming Shu

Since the piezoelectric properties were used for energy harvesting, almost all forms of energy harvester needs to be bonded with a mass block to achieve pre-stress. In this article, disc type piezoelectric energy harvester is chosen as the research object and the relationship between mass bonding area and power output is studied. It is found that if the bonding area is changed as curved, which is usually complanate in previous studies, the deformation of the circular piezoelectric ceramic is more uniform and the power output is enhanced. In order to test the change of the deformation, we spray several homocentric annular electrodes on the surface of a piece of bare piezoelectric ceramic and the output of each electrode is tested. Through this optimization method, the power output is enhanced to more than 11[Formula: see text]mW for a matching load about 24[Formula: see text]k[Formula: see text] and a tip mass of 30[Formula: see text]g at its resonant frequency of 139[Formula: see text]Hz.


Author(s):  
Abbas F. Jasim ◽  
Hao Wang ◽  
Greg Yesner ◽  
Ahmad Safari ◽  
Pat Szary

This study investigated the energy harvesting performance of a piezoelectric module in asphalt pavements through laboratory testing and multi-physics based simulation. The energy harvester module was assembled with layers of Bridge transducers and tested in the laboratory. A decoupled approach was used to study the interaction between the energy harvester and the surrounding pavement. The effects of embedment location, vehicle speed, and temperature on energy harvesting performance were investigated. The analysis findings indicate that the embedment location and vehicle speed affects the resulted power output of the piezoelectric energy harvesting system. The embedment depth of the energy module affects both the magnitude and frequency of stress pulse on top of the energy module induced by tire loading. On the other hand, higher vehicle speed causes greater loading frequency and thus greater power output; the effect of pavement temperature is negligible. The analysis of total power output before reaching fatigue failure of the energy module can be used to determine the optimum embedment location in the asphalt layer. The proposed energy harvesting system provides great potential to generate green energy from waste kinetic energy in roadway pavements. Field study is recommended to verify these findings with long-term performance monitoring of pavement with embedded energy harvesters.


2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (7) ◽  
pp. 998-1009 ◽  
Author(s):  
XF Zhang ◽  
HS Tzou

Based on the electromechanical coupling of piezoelectricity, a piezoelectric ring energy harvester is designed and tested in this study, such that the harvester can be used to power electric devices in the closed-circuit condition. Output energies across the external resistive load are evaluated when the ring energy harvester is subjected to harmonic excitations, and various design parameters are discussed to maximize the power output. In order to validate the theoretical energy harvesting results, laboratory experiments are conducted. Comparing experiment results with theoretical ones, the errors between them are under 10% for the output voltage. Laboratory experiments demonstrate that the ring energy harvester is workable in practical applications.


Author(s):  
M. H. Ansari ◽  
M. Amin Karami

A three dimensional piezoelectric vibration energy harvester is designed to generate electricity from heartbeat vibrations. The device consists of several bimorph piezoelectric beams stacked on top of each other. These horizontal bimorph beams are connected to each other by rigid vertical beams making a fan-folded geometry. One end of the design is clamped and the other end is free. One major problem in micro-scale piezoelectric energy harvesters is their high natural frequency. The same challenge is faced in development of a compact vibration energy harvester for the low frequency heartbeat vibrations. One way to decrease the natural frequency is to increase the length of the bimorph beam. This approach is not usually practical due to size limitations. By utilizing the fan-folded geometry, the natural frequency is decreased while the size constraints are observed. The required size limit of the energy harvester is 1 cm by 1 cm by 1 cm. In this paper, the natural frequencies and mode shapes of fan-folded energy harvesters are analytically derived. The electro-mechanical coupling has been included in the model for the piezoelectric beam. The design criteria for the device are discussed.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document