A piezoelectric wind energy harvesting device with right-angle cantilever beam

Abstract

Energy utilization and environment protection are universal hot topics in our society. Harvesting ambient clean energy sources to supply low power devices has shown a wide application potential. In this paper, a kind of right-angle piezoelectric cantilever beam is proposed to harvesting wind energy as a power supplier for remote wireless sensor network nodes. Structure design and working principle of the device are introduced. Performances of the device are investigated numerically and experimentally, which are compared with the traditional cantilever beam. The strain distributions and natural frequencies of the structures are analyzed with FEA simulations. With the same natural frequency and piezoelectric element, output capacities of the prototypes were tested under different wind speeds. With an optimal load of about 500 kΩ, the maximum output power of the right-angle cantilever beam is over 1.3mW under the wind speed of 6 m/s, which is about twice as much as the traditional cantilever beam.