Energy harvesting from pedestrian movement using piezoelectric material

Abstract

With the lapse of time, attempts are being made to find out alternative materials as sources of energy to meet the increasing energy demand. Present work aims at energy harvesting from pedestrian movement over piezoelectric material with or without rubber strips. Pedestrian data have been collected from six locations of Agartala city, India. To get more power, mechanical damping is kept low using piezo embedded rubber strips. Piezoelectric materials embedded with rubber strips yield better results than that without rubber strips. Piezoelectric materials connected in Series Parallel Combination (SPC) give better results compared to Parallel Series Combination (PSC). Sensitivity analysis shows that pressure level and walking speed significantly affect the voltage generation. The energy generated by this process can be stored up in super capacitors that meet minor energy requirements such as lighting a small powered LED light on the roadside, charging mobile phones etc.