Design and optimisation for a piezoelectric frame to harvest energy from structure vibrations

Abstract

ABSTRACT Energy harvesting from low amplitude vibrating sources is a challenging problem. To overcome this problem, there is a requirement to design and optimise a harvester device to amplify the vibration to access a considerable amount of harvested energy. In this paper, a new diamond frame design for piezoelectric energy harvesting is purposed and compared with a single frame conventional design of piezoelectric harvesters to amplify the vibration amplitude to harvest more energy. Also, a linear optimisation function is obtained to optimise the frame shape which means with different values of input displacement to the device, an optimum angle of frame is obtained. To show the versatility of the novel design, it is used in both flat and round structures. Based on the results with the new design in a flat and round structure, 35% and 70% improvement in energy harvesting are obtained, respectively.