Piezo-electric energy harvesters

International Conference on Smart Materials & Structures

June 15 -17, 2015 Las Vegas, USA

M Gaith, N Ghareeb, T Alloush and M Al Sarraf

Posters-Accepted Abstracts: J Material Sci Eng

Abstract :

Vibration-based energy harvesting systems have been the focus of many researches in the last 20 years. The most common vibration-based energy harvester consists of a beam with one or two piezoelectric layers. These layers are bounded by electrodes that harvest energy from the produced voltage. In this work a unimorph cantilever beam is proposed. The equations of vibration are derived and the relation between tip displacement and voltage along its length is deduced. The effects of the beam dimensions and material properties regarding the active and inactive layers on the output power and eigenmodes are also investigated. Finally the theoretical model is validated by using the finite element method software ABAQUS where the results are compared to the experimental data retrieved from a similar work in literature.