In this study, we investigated the capability of harvesting the electrical energy from mechanical vibrations in a dynamic environment through a ''cymbal'' piezoelectric transducer. Targeted mechanical vibrations lie in the range of 50-150 Hz with force amplitude in the order of 1 kN (automobile engine vibration level). It was found that under such severe stress conditions the metal-ceramic composite transducer ''cymbal'' is a promising structure. The metal cap enhances the endurance of the ceramic to sustain high loads along with stress amplification. In this preliminary study, the experiments were performed at the frequency of 100 Hz on a cymbal with 29 mm diameter and 1 mm thickness under a force of 7.8 N. At this frequency and force level, 39 mW power was generated from a cymbal measured across a 400 k resistor. A DC-DC converter was designed which allowed the transfer of 30 mW power to a low impedance load of 5 k with a 2% duty cycle and at a switching frequency of 1 kHz.

Cymbal transducers have been found as a promising structure for piezoelectric energy harvesting under high force (∼100 N) at cyclic conditions (∼100-200 Hz). The thicker steel cap enhances the endurance of the ceramic to sustain higher ac loads along with stress amplification. This study reports the performance of the cymbal transducer under ac force of 70 N with a pre-stress load of 67 N at 100 Hz frequency. At this frequency and force level, 52 mW power was generated from a cymbal measured across a 400 k resistor. The ceramic diameter was fixed at 29 mm and various thicknesses were experimented to optimize the performance. The results showed that the PZT ceramic of 1 mm thickness provided the highest power output with 0.4 mm endcap. In order to accommodate such high dynamic pressure the transducer and cap materials were modified and it was found that the higher piezoelectric voltage constant ceramic provided the higher output power. Electrical output power as a function of applied ac stress magnitude was also computed using FEM analysis and the results were found to be functionally coherent with experiment. This study clearly demonstrated the feasibility of using piezoelectric transducers for harvesting energy from high magnitude vibration sources such as automobile.

This study describes a multi-layer piezoelectric voltage and power transformer which has one direction poling, operates in a wide-frequency range and delivers both step-up and step-down voltages by inverting the electrical connections. In this design, the input and output electrodes are on the same side of the disk and are isolated from each other by a fixed gap. Investigations were performed on a disk of diameter 29.1 mm. The electrode pattern is a ring/dot structure, where a strip connects the dots. Various ratios of input to output area were studied and it was found that area ratio in the range of 2.8–3.3 or the output diameter in range of 13–15 mm yields high power and efficiency. The power density for the optimized single layer transformer was 40 W/cm3 while that for the 3-layer structure was 25 W/cm3. Though the power increased with multilayer structure, the effective power density decreased because of the interlayer constraints.

Pb(Zr,Ti)O3–Pb(Mn1/3 Nb2/3)O3 (PZT–PMnN) system has been studied for high‐power piezoelectric applications. This study investigates this system to find out the composition with high‐power density piezoelectric characteristics and low tem‐perature coefficient of resonance frequency (TCF). It was found that the composition 0.9PZT–0.1PMnN (Zr/Ti = 0.51/0.49) modified with 6 mol% Sr exhibits a TCF of −8 ppm/°C (−20 to +80°C). Further, the dielectric and piezoelectric properties of this composition are as follows: kp= 0.53; Qm= 800; d33= 274; ε33/ε0= 1290 and tan δ=1.1%, which shows the suitability of this composition for ultrasonic devices used under fluctuating thermal environment.