New energy harvesting systems, designed for new piezoelectric transducers, with charging energy management

Abstract

New developments in ultralow power electronic devices can now use much solution to energy harvesting systems designed to interface directly with a piezoelectric transducer. However, these environmental energy sources are typically very low power. Recently, a significant number of piezoelectric devices based on lead titanate zirconate (PZTN) have been designed with the purpose of the piezoelectric transducer. At INCDIE ICPE-CA Bucharest we have realized a piezoelectric transducer for which a PZT+Nb piezoelectric ceramic element was used for low energy source build with piezoelectric circular and linear transducers. Due to their dielectric proprieties and small size, (38 mm x 14 mm x 2 mm), the piezoelectric linear transducers can be optimize the energy harvesting systems applications for which the vibration duration is very short. A multiphysics numerical simulation further illustrates such piezoelectric transducer operation. The energy harvesting system is constituted of five functional blocks which are described in this paper.

New Energy Harvesting Systems Based on New Materials

“…Figure 15. The low energy source built with piezoelectric linear transducers system, INCDIE ICPE-CA concept [26]. Figure 16.…”

“…Advanced Electronic Circuits -Principles, Architectures and Applications on Emerging Technologies Figure 17. Computational domain for the flow problem (the plate is placed in a flow duct, as in a hydrodynamic test setting) (concept ECEE-UPB) [26]. Figure 18.…”

“…Figure 18. Solutions of the multiphysics problem: Fluid streamlines and electric potential color map on the surface of the plate (concept ECEE-UPB) [26].…”

“…Another piezoelectric transducer, consisting of a thin plate of piezoceramic material with dimensions (34 mm  14 mm  1 mm), is illustrated in Figure 15. A layer of conductive material is deposited on one side of the plate (see the lower picture in Figure 15) and four equal rectangular conductive areas are deposited on the other side (see the upper picture in Figure 15), [26]. If the plate is subjected to pressure and mechanical deformation, due to exposure to wind or being placed in a fluid flow, the piezoelectric material will be polarized and a non-uniform electrical potential distribution could be identified on the faces of the plate.…”

“…If the deformation of the ceramic plate is not uniform (the case of a flexible material), the electrodes might take different potential values and the piezoceramic plate becomes an electrical generator with four different output voltages: U 10 ,U 20 ,U 30 ,U 40 , Figure 16. If the plate is rigid and the deformations are identical, the four terminals provide equal output voltages, [26]. Figure 19.…”