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Abstract
Extracting energy from ambient vibration to power wireless sensor nodes has been an attractive area of research, particularly in the automotive monitoring field. This article reports the design, analysis and testing of a vibration energy harvesting device based on a miniature asymmetric air-spaced cantilever. The developed design offers high power density, and delivers electric power that is sufficient to support most wireless sensor nodes for structural health monitoring (SHM) applications. The optimized design underwent three evolutionary steps, starting from a simple cantilever design, going through an air-spaced cantilever, and ending up with an optimized air-spaced geometry with boosted power density level. Finite Element Analysis (FEA) was used as an initial tool to compare the three geometries' stiffness (K), output open-circuit voltage (Vave), and average normal strain in the piezoelectric transducer (εave) that directly affect its output voltage. Experimental tests were also carried out in order to examine the energy harvesting level in each of the three designs. The experimental results show how to boost the power output level in a thin air-spaced cantilever beam for energy within the same space envelope. The developed thin air-spaced cantilever (8.37 cm3), has a maximum power output of 2.05 mW (H = 29.29 μJ/cycle).
Highlights
Most of the energy harvesting units found in the literature are based on vibration using piezoelectric transducers
This is attributed to the simplicity of these systems and the level of energy offered by vibration sources [1,2] and because of the piezoelectric compatibility with electronic devices, commercial portable devices and wireless sensor nodes [3]
The DuraAct patch transducer element (DPT) used in this study is a compact and flexible unit which utilizes a thin piezoceramic foil sandwiched between two conductive films all embedded in a ductile composite-polymer structure, labelled (DuraAct P-876.A11) and developed by PI (Physik Instrumente) Ltd
Summary
Most of the energy harvesting units found in the literature are based on vibration using piezoelectric transducers. Vibration energy harvesters can be a good option when applied on constant speed machinery by toning their resonance frequencies with the machines’ operation speeds. Its worth mentioning that tyre induced vibration is highly affected by road surface roughness which can change vibration velocity and acceleration amplitudes [13,25]. This can directly affect the amount of the harvested energy when a vibration energy harvester is employed. >5 VAC but not specified the wheel up-side-down to make sure the PZT operates in compression mode (21–25) Vp-p over the frequency range (4–16) Hz in which the system almost remains at resonance
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