Design and Experimental Investigation of a Piezoelectric Rotation Energy Harvester Using Bistable and Frequency Up-Conversion Mechanisms

Abstract

Harvesting energy from rotational motion for powering low-power electrical devices is attracting increasing research interest in recent years. In this paper, a magnetic-coupled buckled beam piezoelectric rotation energy harvester (MBBP-REH) with bistable and frequency up-conversion is presented to harvest low speed rotational energy with a broadband. A buckled beam attached with piezoelectric patches under dynamical axial load enables the harvester to achieve high output power under small excitation force. The electromechanical coupling dynamical model is developed to characterize the MBBP-REH. Both the simulations and experiments are carried out to evaluate the performance of the harvesters in various conditions under different excitations. The experimental results indicate that the proposed harvester is applicable for low speed rotation and can generate stable output power under wideband rotating excitation. For the harvester with two magnets that produce attractive forces with the center magnet of the buckled beam, the average power is 682.7 μW and the maximum instantaneous power is 1450 μW at 360 r/min.

Development and performance evaluation of a wheel-type cantilevered piezoelectric rotational energy harvester via an unfixed exciting magnet

“…Regarding the contact excitation mode, the deformation of piezoelectric elements was mostly induced by mechanical plucking (Kuang et al, 2016; Raja et al, 2023; Yi et al, 2021) or impact-based steel balls (Chen et al, 2020; Roundy and Tola, 2014; Yang et al, 2014). Because the direct contact during the mechanical plucking or the impact of steel balls would decrease long-term reliability of the piezoelectric elements and plectra and cause a lot of noise, the contactless magnetic plucking technique was developed to avoid the direct contact between the exciting mechanisms and piezoelectric elements (Dauksevicius et al, 2018; Xie et al, 2018; Xue and Roundy, 2017). The contactless magnetic plucking technique mainly uses the non-contact magnetic coupling force in the process of rotation to bend and deform the piezoelectric elements.…”

Design and Experimental Investigation of a Rotational Piezoelectric Energy Harvester with an Offset Distance from the Rotation Center

“…Technologies of kinetic energy harvesting have achieved rapid progress in recent decades due to their ability to harvest ambient kinetic energy to generate electricity. Among the kinetic motion, rotational motion has been widely used for various applications, including engines [ 1 ], turbines [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ], rotating shafts [ 6 ], human motions [ 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 ] and vehicle wheels [ 11 , 12 , 13 ]. Fu et al [ 14 ] reviewed the state-of-the-art technology in the field of rotational energy harvesting for self-powered sensing.…”

A cantilevered piezoelectric energy harvester excited by an axially pushed wedge cam using repulsive magnets for rotary motion

“…Zou et al explored a magnetically coupled energy harvester using two inverted piezoelectric cantilever beams for rotary motion [28]. Xie et al presented a bistable piezoelectric rotation energy harvester with the frequency up-conversion capability by using a magnetic-coupled buckled beam [29]. A brief survey of literatures shows that the researchers have already conducted lots of work on the I-PREHs to improve the performance and the considerable progress has been made.…”