An Adaptive Self-powered Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting Circuit and Its Application on Bridge Condition Monitoring

Abstract

Abstract:The abundant mechanical vibration energy in bridge road environment can be converted into electric energy by using the piezoelectric energy harvest technology, which could be an efficient way to provide energy required by the wireless sensor network in the bridge condition monitoring system. An autonomous energy harvesting system has been designed based on cantilever beams for sensing and acquiring the bridge vibration energy. After the analysis of the dynamic properties of the piezoelectric cantilever beam in the energy conversion, three kinds of interface circuits were compared through simulation and experimental results. It was shown that the VD interface circuit has less power loss. Furthermore, the proposed closed loop control method based on the VD circuit was simple, adaptive, and self-powered, which is suitable for the road energy harvesting application. Finally, the energy harvesting system based on VD circuit was realized with harvested power of around 0.8mW.Keywords: piezoelectric cantilever energy harvester 1; autonomous 2; adaptive 3; self-powered 4; voltage doubler interface circuit 5; closed loop control 6; feed-forward 7; multi-shot technology 8

Review of Active Circuit and Passive Circuit Techniques to Improve the Performance of Highly Efficient Energy Harvesting Systems

“…Table 4 is a summary of the active rectifier circuit used in piezoelectric harvesting circuitry, with a focus on the operation principle or method and the efficacy of these circuits. Chew et al, [138] -Adaptive circuit include full bridge (FB) rectifier, buck converter, analogue MPPT controller, and energy aware interface (EAI) -Full analogue Power management circuit (PMM) with adaptive circuit -Energy transfer efficiency at 70 to 80% Li et al, [139] -Closed loop control method based on the voltage doubler interface circuit -DC-DC input voltage as the feed-forward signal to adjust the switching duration -Adaptive Self-powered stand-alone system -Harvested power was only 0.78 mW with the efficiency of 16% by using this control strategy.…”

“…The passive diode-rectifier circuit is therefore the simplest technology with the lowest efficiency [135][136][137][138][139]. In a semi-active circuit, the output voltage can be processed nonlinearly by a switched control (MOS field effect transistor and inductor) circuit to increase its magnitude and change its phase based on the construction synchronised switching damping principle, but at the expense of complexity and high-energy consumption.…”

“…Without accumulating a significant quantity of energy, the energy harvesting system would be ineffective as a power source for the majority of electronic devices. However, energy harvesting systems typically operate at low voltage (below 1.0 V) and very low power (below 1.0 mW), which is lower than the power of the majority of electronic applications [1][2][3]. Therefore, a few proficient passive or active interface circuits are suggested and have been predicted as ac-dc harvesting circuit sources for the purpose of harvesting high power from piezoelectric energy harvesters.…”

“…The evolution of piezoelectric harvesting circuitry from passive multiplication to active multiplication techniques used in piezoelectric energy harvesting systems will be reviewed in chronological order. Current literature [2][3][4] has demonstrated an interest in enhancing the efficiency of circuitry by incorporating various harvesting circuit techniques. These techniques can be classified as passive [6][7] and active harvesting circuitry [8][9][10] rectification and multiplication techniques, respectively.…”