Investigation on the design and application of 3-dimensional wide-band piezoelectric energy harvester for low amplitude vibration sources

Abstract

In order to realize 3-dimensional, wide-band vibration energy harvesting in low-frequency and low-amplitude environments, a multi-layer Z-type beam piezoelectric harvester structure is proposed. Nonlinear mass and instabilities of horizontal and longitudinal are introduced by the multi-layer Z-type beam structure. Simulation and experiment results show that when the number of beam layer is 7 and excitation intensity is 0.8 g, there are more than 4 voltage peaks within 5–40 Hz, the maximum voltage is above 16 V, the maximum output power can reach 180 μW, which greatly widens harvesting frequency band. When exciting in horizontal and vertical directions, the maximum voltages peaks are all above 10 V, the number of voltage peaks are all above 5, maximum output powers can reach 108 μW and 53 μW respectively, by which 3-dimensional energy harvesting is verified. Next, the performances of arrays are studied. When the arrays number is 12, excitation intensity reduces to 0.2 g, nearly 90% of the voltage response amplitudes for parallel arrays within 15–40 Hz are above 4 V, almost all the voltage response amplitudes for series arrays are above 5 V within 17–40 Hz, even response amplitudes are all above 10 V within 23–33 Hz. The maximum output power generated by parallel arrays is up to 864.5 μW. So, wide-band 3-dimensional vibration energy harvesting for low amplitude environment is realized by multi-layer Z-type vibration energy harvester. Finally, the feasibility that wireless switch could be powered by the multi-layer Z-type vibration energy harvester parallel arrays from low-frequency and low-amplitude environment is verified.