Energy Harvesting from a Multi-Frequency Converter Array

Theoretical investigations of a vibration-based energy harvester are presented in this paper. The harvester is suitable to extract energy from low-frequency, high-amplitude environments. The device proposed in this article consists of four one-layer piezoelectric cantilevered beams. Using energy method, the differential equations governing the electromechanical behavior of the system are derived and solvednumerically. In the proposed model, the external force is considered harmonic and investigated for various frequencies and consequently the values of generated voltage and power are also obtained corresponding to the deflection of the beam tip. The performance of different beams utilized in the present study are compared to each other and the power of the harvester of each beam is calculated. The results obtained are compared with a similar experimental model which shows analogous results with appropriate accuracy.

Keywords:

energy harvesting , piezoelectricity , electromechanical modeling