Authors : M.S. Bhuyan, Sawal H. Md. Ali, M. Othman, B.Y. Majlis, Shafii A. Wahab and Shabiul Islam
Abstract: The study presented in this research targets the modeling and analysis of a 31 transverse mode type piezoelectric cantilever beam for voltage generation by transforming ambient fluid induced vibration energy into usable electrical energy. Piezoelectric materials have the ability to convert mechanical forces into an electric field in response to the application of mechanical stresses or vice versa. This property of the materials has found applications in sensor and actuator technologies and recently in the new field of energy harvesting. A mathematical model for energy harvesting by a piezoelectric cantilever beam device, based on classical beam analysis is presented. The optimization algorithm is implemented in Matlab, based on four physical dimension parameters of the energy harvesting cantilever. The optimal cantilever design from the theoretically derived algorithm determines four physical dimensions parameter to maximize output power. The output power is used to evaluate the performance of the energy harvester. Some interesting aspects that affect the generation of power are discussed. From this analysis, it is found that increasing the frequency of the vibration improve the output power while beyond a certain value further improvement can not be achieved by simply increasing the vibration frequency. Moreover, output power of the energy harvester is found as a function of external resistance. The model predicted anoptimized design with maximizes output power of 0.9 mW at a natural frequency of 200 Hz. Piezoelectric cantilever based energy harvester device can potentially replace the battery that supplies power in microwatt range necessary for operating wireless sensor devices.
M.S. Bhuyan, Sawal H. Md. Ali, M. Othman, B.Y. Majlis, Shafii A. Wahab and Shabiul Islam, 2014. Modeling of an Energy Harvesting Piezoelectric Cantilever Beam. Research Journal of Applied Sciences, 9: 86-91.