Electrode Coverage Optimization for Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting from Tip Excitation

Abstract

Piezoelectric energy harvesting using cantilever-type structures has been extensively investigated due to its potential application in providing power supplies for wireless sensor networks, but the low output power has been a bottleneck for its further commercialization. To improve the power conversion capability, a piezoelectric beam with different electrode coverage ratios is studied theoretically and experimentally in this paper. A distributed-parameter theoretical model is established for a bimorph piezoelectric beam with the consideration of the electrode coverage area. The impact of the electrode coverage on the capacitance, the output power and the optimal load resistance are analyzed, showing that the piezoelectric beam has the best performance with an electrode coverage of 66.1%. An experimental study was then carried out to validate the theoretical results using a piezoelectric beam fabricated with segmented electrodes. The experimental results fit well with the theoretical model. A 12% improvement on the Root-Mean-Square (RMS) output power was achieved with the optimized electrode converge ratio (66.1%). This work provides a simple approach to utilizing piezoelectric beams in a more efficient way.

Dual-Structured Flexible Piezoelectric Film Energy Harvesters for Effectively Integrated Performance

“…As we expected, the energy harvesting performance of the double-faced device are the voltage up to ~280 V and the current up to ~2.2 μA, which indicated the good performance enhancement and integration in the bending deformation. Because the piezoelectric energy device and technology can be directly associated with various sensor systems [41,42,43,44], our experimental and theoretical demonstration for performance improvement of flexible thin film energy harvesters using the intuitive and simple approach will promote more rapidly the practical developments of flexible piezoelectric energy harvesting devices for future self-powered and self-sufficient sensor systems.…”

Investigation upon the performance of piezoelectric energy harvester with elastic extensions

“…which can actually be used to eliminate the termṼ p in the boundary conditions (16). In the end, we can simplify the problem as a combination of the governing equations…”

“…Theoretical modelling, numerical computation, and experimental investigations have been conducted to analyze the performances of CPEHs. [13,14] Different methods have been put forward to optimize the performance of CPEHs by changing beam shape [15], electrode coverage [16] and configuration [17], streamwise position of piezoelectric patches [18,19], and etc. Despite all these efforts, the performance of current piezoelectric energy harvesting devices are still far from meeting the requirement of engineering applications.…”

Modeling and Efficiency Analysis of a Piezoelectric Energy Harvester Based on the Flow Induced Vibration of a Piezoelectric Composite Pipe

“…Though there may be charge cancellation on the electrodes attached to the piezoelectric patches according to the fundamental unstable mode for the cantilever pipe, [21] we assume that the piezoelectric patches in the current contribution are covered with single electrodes for the sake of model simplicity. In the literature, there has been some research concerning the optimization of electrode distribution [23]. The consideration of the optimization of electrode distribution is a totally different topic and will not be covered here.…”