Heartbeat Energy Harvesting Using the Fan-Folded Piezoelectric Beam Geometry

Author(s):  
M. H. Ansari ◽  
M. Amin Karami

A three dimensional piezoelectric vibration energy harvester is designed to generate electricity from heartbeat vibrations. The device consists of several bimorph piezoelectric beams stacked on top of each other. These horizontal bimorph beams are connected to each other by rigid vertical beams making a fan-folded geometry. One end of the design is clamped and the other end is free. One major problem in micro-scale piezoelectric energy harvesters is their high natural frequency. The same challenge is faced in development of a compact vibration energy harvester for the low frequency heartbeat vibrations. One way to decrease the natural frequency is to increase the length of the bimorph beam. This approach is not usually practical due to size limitations. By utilizing the fan-folded geometry, the natural frequency is decreased while the size constraints are observed. The required size limit of the energy harvester is 1 cm by 1 cm by 1 cm. In this paper, the natural frequencies and mode shapes of fan-folded energy harvesters are analytically derived. The electro-mechanical coupling has been included in the model for the piezoelectric beam. The design criteria for the device are discussed.

Author(s):  
M. H. Ansari ◽  
M. Amin Karami

A fan-folded piezoelectric energy harvester is designed to generate electricity using heartbeat vibrations. This energy harvester consists of several bimorph beams stacked on top of each other making a fan-folded shape. Each beam has a brass substrate and two piezoelectric patches attached on both sides of it. These beams are connected to each other by rigid beams. One end of the device is clamped to the wall and the other end is free to vibrate. A tip mass is placed at the free end to enhance the output power of the device and reduce the natural frequency of the system. High natural frequency is one major concern about the microscaled energy harvesters. The size for this energy harvester is 1 cm by 1 cm by 1 cm, which makes the natural frequency very high. By utilizing the fan-folded geometry and adding tip mass and link mass to the configuration, this natural frequency is reduced to the desired range. The generated electricity can be used to power up a pacemaker. If enough electricity is generated, the pacemaker operates without having a battery and the patient does not need to have a surgery every seven to ten years to have the battery replaced. The power needed for a pacemaker to operate is about 1 microwatt. In this paper, the natural frequencies and mode shapes of fan-folded energy harvesters with added tip mass and link mass are analytically derived. The electro-mechanical coupling has been included in the model and the expression for the multi-mode power frequency response function is calculated.


2014 ◽  
Vol 953-954 ◽  
pp. 655-658 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guang Qing Shang ◽  
Hong Bing Wang ◽  
Chun Hua Sun

Energy harvesting system has become one of important areas of ​​research and develops rapidly. How to improve the performance of the piezoelectric vibration energy harvester is a key issue in engineering applications. There are many literature on piezoelectric energy harvesting. The paper places focus on summarizing these literature of mathematical modeling of piezoelectric energy harvesting, ranging from the linear to nonlinear, from early a single mechanical degree to piezoaeroelastic problems.


Author(s):  
M. H. Ansari ◽  
M. Amin Karami

A piezoelectric vibration energy harvester is designed to generate electricity under the weight of passing crowds. The piezoelectric beam buckles to a controlled extent when the device is stepped on. The device is a seven bar mechanism. The upper and lower bars as well as the lateral links are rigid. The middle horizontal beam is a bimorph piezoelectric beam. Damages to the piezoelectric beam are avoided by constraining its axial deformation. This constrain is implemented by limiting squeezing of the mechanism. When a person moves over the mechanism or steps off the devices it causes the bimorph to buckle or return to the unbuckled condition. The transitions result in vibrations of the piezoelectric beam and thus generate energy. In this paper, the energy harvester is analytically modeled. The electro-mechanical coupling and the geometric nonlinearities have been included in the model for the piezoelectric beam. The design criteria for the device are discussed. It is demonstrated that the device can be realized with commonly used piezoelectric patches and can generate hundreds of milliwatts of power. A three part beam is also investigated. The effect of design parameters on the generated power and required tolerances are illustrated. The proposed device could be implemented in the sidewalks producing energy from the weight of people passing over it. Other possible applications are portable smart phones chargers and shoe hill energy harvesting. Dance floor of a club is another applicable example for using this harvester. The main advantage of using horizontal configuration instead of a vertical arrangement is the ease of placement in the pavements.


Author(s):  
M. R. Awal ◽  
◽  
M. Jusoh ◽  
T. Sabapathy ◽  
R. B. Ahmad ◽  
...  

This paper presents a pattern less piezoelectric harvester for ultra low power energy applications. Usually patterned cantilevers are used as vibration energy harvester which results additional fabrication process. Hence, to reduce the process, a four layer cantilever configuration is used to design the harvester with Aluminum, Silicon and Zinc Oxide. The device dimension is settled to 12×10×≈0.5009 mm3 with ≈300 nm deposition thickness for each layer. The modeling and fabrication processes are demonstrated in detail. The induced voltage by the cantilever is obtained through the analytical and practical measurements. From the measurements, it is found that, the maximum induced voltage is 91.2 mV from practical measurement with voltage density of 1.517 mV/mm3. It is evident from the results that, this pattern less model can be useful for next generation vibration energy harvester with simpler technology.


2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (7) ◽  
pp. 1105-1114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dongxing Cao ◽  
Xiangying Guo ◽  
Wenhua Hu

The transformation of waste vibration energy into low-power electricity has been intensely researched over the last decade to enable self-sustained wireless electronic components. Many kinds of nonlinear oscillators have been explored by several research groups in an effort to enhance the frequency bandwidth of operation. The negative stiffness vibration isolator, as a kind of passive vibration isolator, has undergone extensive investigation because of its low-frequency isolator characteristics. In this article, a novel broadband piezoelectric vibration energy harvester, which can be used for low-frequency ambient mechanical energy harvesting, is designed, and its dynamic responses are analyzed based on the advantage of the negative stiffness vibration isolator. The multi-scale perturbation method is applied to solve the electromechanical equations of the piezoelectric vibration energy harvester and obtain approximate analytical solutions. Solutions based on the analytical method and numerical simulations reveal the characteristics of significant broadband performance. The effects of the various system parameters on the frequency responses and output voltage of the piezoelectric vibration energy harvester system are investigated in detail, and the vibration isolation ability is verified by experimental measurements. It was concluded that the proposed piezoelectric vibration energy harvester achieved broadband vibration energy harvesting in the low-frequency vibration range.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3.7) ◽  
pp. 95
Author(s):  
Li Wah Thong ◽  
Yu Jing Bong ◽  
Swee Leong Kok ◽  
Roszaidi Ramlan

The utilization of vibration energy harvesters as a substitute to batteries in wireless sensors has shown prominent interest in the literature. Various approaches have been adapted in the energy harvesters to competently harvest vibrational energy over a wider spectrum of frequencies with optimize power output.   A typical bistable piezoelectric energy harvester, where the influence of magnetic field is induced into a linear piezoelectric cantilever, is designed and analyzed in this paper. The exploitations of the magnetic force specifically creates nonlinear response and bistability in the energy harvester that extends the operational frequency spectrum for optimize performance.  Further analysis on the effects of axial spacing displacement between two repulsive magnets of the harvester, in terms of x-axis (horizontal) and z-axis (vertical) on its natural resonant frequency and performance based on the frequency response curve are investigated for realizing optimal power output. Experimental results show that by selecting the optimal axial spacing displacement, the vibration energy harvester can be designed to produce maximized output power in an improved broadband of frequency spectrum.  


Author(s):  
Kuo-Shen Chen

Wireless sensor networks become increasingly important in modern life for structural health monitoring and other related applications. In these applications, due to their overall sensor populations and possible covered measurement areas, the replacement of batteries becomes a difficult and unrealistic task. As a result, energy harvesters to convert environment wasted vibration energy into electricity for powering those sensor nodes become important and many miniaturized device have been realized by using MEMS technology. In order to achieve optimal performance, the energy harvester must be operated at the resonance frequency. However, the vibration frequencies of environmental vibrations are usually much less than that of those miniaturizing energy harvesters and this fact could be a major barrier for energy harvesting performance. In this paper, a new piezoelectric energy scavenging concept is proposed and demonstrated to convert environmental vibrations into electricity. Unlike previous MEMS-based piezoelectric energy harvesters, which suffer from matching between environmental low frequency vibration and the much higher system natural frequency, this work proposes a novel beating design using polymer piezoelectric materials in collaborating with a beating mechanism. That is, by creating impact force via the low frequency vibration motion from the mechanism, it is possible to excite system natural frequency by the low frequency environmental vibrations and it is possible to operate the entire system at the natural frequency. This work contains details in presenting this idea, designing piezoelectric harvester systems with flexible PVDF elements, exploring their vibration characteristics, and energy accumulating strategies by using a capacitor with a full-bridged rectifiers or a boost conversion. By experimental characterization, the overall harvesting efficiency of the proposed design is much greater than that from the design without the beating mechanism. It indicates that the efficiency is significantly improved and the proposed translational design could potentially improve the future design approach for piezoelectric energy harvesters significantly. In summary, this preliminary study shows that it is a feasible scheme for the application of piezoelectric materials in harvesting electricity from environmental vibrations. Although this work is still in its initial phase, the results and conclusions of this work are still invaluable for guiding the development of high efficient piezoelectric harvesters in the future.


Author(s):  
Mohamed A. E. Mahmoud ◽  
Eihab M. Abdel-Rahman ◽  
Raafat R. Mansour ◽  
Ehab F. El-Saadany

A novel vibration energy harvester (VEH) architecture is developed to eliminate the need for restoring force elements (springs) in the VEH. The architecture can realize VEHs with arbitrarily low center frequency. Two prototypes were fabricated and tested to demonstrate the feasibility of this architecture. The center frequency of the first prototype was found to be 2 Hz demonstrating low frequency operation. The second prototype improve the performance by five times at much smaller footprint using thin film fabrication process and precision alignment.


Author(s):  
Muath Bani-Hani ◽  
M. Amin Karami

The batteries of the current pacing devices are relatively large and occupy over 60 percent of the size of pulse generators. Therefore, they cannot be placed in the subtle areas of human body. In this paper, the mastication force and the resulting tooth pressure are converted to electricity. The pressure energy can be converted to electricity by using the piezoelectric effect. The tooth crown is used as a power autonomous pulse generator. We refer to this envisioned pulse generator as the smart tooth. The smart tooth is in the form of a dental implant. A piezoelectric vibration energy harvester is designed and modeled for this purpose. The Piezoelectric based energy harvesters investigated and analyzed in this paper initially includes a single degree of freedom piezoelectric based stack energy harvester which utilizes a harvesting circuit employing the case of a purely resistive circuit. The next step is utilizing and investigating a bimorph piezoelectric beam which is integrated/embedded in the smart tooth implant. Mastication process causes the bimorph beam to buckle or return to unbuckled condition. The transitions result in vibration of the piezoelectric beam and thus generate energy. The power estimated by the two mechanisms is in the order of hundreds of microwatts. Both scenarios of the energy harvesters are analytically modeled. The exact analytical solution of the piezoelectric beam energy harvester with Euler-Bernoulli beam assumptions is presented. The electro-mechanical coupling and the geometric nonlinearities have been included in the model for the piezoelectric beam.


Micromachines ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 203
Author(s):  
Xiaohua Huang ◽  
Cheng Zhang ◽  
Keren Dai

Using the piezoelectric effect to harvest energy from surrounding vibrations is a promising alternative solution for powering small electronic devices such as wireless sensors and portable devices. A conventional piezoelectric energy harvester (PEH) can only efficiently collect energy within a small range around the resonance frequency. To realize broadband vibration energy harvesting, the idea of multiple-degrees-of-freedom (DOF) PEH to realize multiple resonant frequencies within a certain range has been recently proposed and some preliminary research has validated its feasibility. Therefore, this paper proposed a multi-DOF wideband PEH based on the frequency interval shortening mechanism to realize five resonance frequencies close enough to each other. The PEH consists of five tip masses, two U-shaped cantilever beams and a straight beam, and tuning of the resonance frequencies is realized by specific parameter design. The electrical characteristics of the PEH are analyzed by simulation and experiment, validating that the PEH can effectively expand the operating bandwidth and collect vibration energy in the low frequency. Experimental results show that the PEH has five low-frequency resonant frequencies, which are 13, 15, 18, 21 and 24 Hz; under the action of 0.5 g acceleration, the maximum output power is 52.2, 49.4, 61.3, 39.2 and 32.1 μW, respectively. In view of the difference between the simulation and the experimental results, this paper conducted an error analysis and revealed that the material parameters and parasitic capacitance are important factors that affect the simulation results. Based on the analysis, the simulation is improved for better agreement with experiments.


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