Energy harvesting using porous piezoelectric beam with impacts

Abstract

An analytical model of impact energy harvester consisting of a cantilever beam with integrated piezoelectric patches and a ball is developed in this paper. The material chosen to extract the energy is porous PZT, a composite material made of two phases: air and PZT. This material offers good control of the capacitance and the stiffness of the resultant composite material and expands the design space for the harvester. The cantilever beam is modelled using a single degree-of-freedom approximation, and a load resistor is used to represent the external circuit. The response of the energy harvester and the power output is obtained for harmonic base excitation, and the effect of excitation frequency, boundary distance, load resistance and porosity of the PZT material. The results highlight the potential for the impact harvester and motivate further studies to optimize the harvester.