Harnessing energy from suspension systems of oceanic vehicles with high-performance piezoelectric generators

Abstract

In this paper, we originally propose an array of piezoelectric generators harnessing energy from suspension systems of oceanic vehicles based on piezoelectric stacks. The design mainly includes base and load platforms, six single vibration suppression units which contain piezoelectric units, flexible joints, springs, and force amplifiers. The piezoelectric stacks harvest energy dissipated into the environment from vibrations in the suspension systems with the merits of low internal resistance and high capacitance so that we can achieve high power output. Experimental results show under the excitation of 0.4 g and a workload of 0.5 kg at resonance, six generators can generate a total peak power of over 0.57 W. The generators can light up an array of over 200 LED diodes. The generators prove capable of charging millifarad or farad-scale capacitors to saturation in 10 s or less. Upon comparison, the in-series connection is more recommendable as much more charges can be stored in the capacitors than that of the parallel connection. We also perform multiple experiments on oceanic vehicles at sea at different speed, and it can fully charge 100 mF capacitors in 80 s. This research can be of great significance for harvesting vibration energy from the suspension system of sea vehicles.