Energy autonomous sensors for I4.0 applications powered by kinetic energy harvesters (KEHs) are widely discussed-especially in terms of vibration harvesting. Typically, industrial linear stages offer weak vibrations, so other inertia-based harvesting methods are investigated. This study investigates the usability of human motion energy harvesters in industrial linear motion technology for the first time. Two KEHs-harvesting swing or shocks, respectively-are tested while controlling the parameters velocity, acceleration, and jerk-limitation according to the real applications' parameter ranges. The swing-KEH and the shock-KEH harvested up to 106 and 124 mW, respectively. Furthermore, a parameter study is performed assuming constant driving lengths with optimised stroke rates to obtain a generalised power and energy profile for each harvester. The analytically obtained overall average power is 22 mW for the swing-KEH and 14 mW for the shock-KEH. The analytical investigation revealed that a reciprocal dependency of performance and velocity exists for both KEHs, respectively. Both experimental and analytical parts show that the wireless sensor node for I4.0 on industrial linear stages can be powered by harvesters made for human motions.

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This paper focuses on packaging of thin film thermoelectric generators (TEG) for energy harvesting applications in sensor nodes for the internet of things (IoT). The TEGs have to be robust against mechanical stress caused by the assembly and packaging process steps and the mismatch of the coefficients of thermal expansion of the used materials. In this work, the mechanical stability of TEGs was evaluated by using a shear force test apparatus and a four line bending test. Furthermore the influence of underfill and stress decoupling thermal adhesives on the mechanical performance was investigated.It could be shown that underfill between the two substrates improves the shear force stability of the investigated thermoelectric generators. During mechanical tests the internal electrical resistance of the modules was monitored. It was observed, that the electrical shutdown coincides with the mechanical shutdown of the generator. By using selected thermal adhesives with and without underfill a sufficient robustness of the thermoelectric generator against typical warpage as known from a standard molded land grid array (LGA) sensor package was achieved.

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