Sealed piezoelectric energy harvester driven by hyperbaric air load

Abstract

In this paper, a sealed piezoelectric energy harvester is fabricated to investigate the performance of the proposed harvester when driven by a hyperbaric air load. The harvester consists of a flexible piezoceramic patch and a closed chamber. The energy from the hyperbaric air can be harvested through the deformation of the lead zirconate titanate patch. A test system is built and a prototype device is tested under various experimental conditions. The test results show that the energy generation performance of the harvester can be tuned by varying its parameters. The output voltage shows an obvious increase with increasing cycle time. When the pressure increases, the output voltage is simultaneously reduced when the flow is fixed. The maximal output voltage and power across the 1000 kΩ resistor are 70.90 V and 9.30 mW, respectively. An effective power of 3.41 mW is measured across the 200 kΩ resistor at a pressure of 0.4 MPa and a cycle time of 0.8 s with a flow of 365 l/min.