In this paper we investigate the capability of harvesting the electric energy from mechanical vibrations in a dynamic environment through a unimorph piezoelectric membrane transducer. Due to the impedance matrices connecting the efforts and flows of the membrane, we have established the dynamic electric equivalent circuit of the transducer. In a first study and in order to validate theoretical results, we performed experiments with a vibrating machine moving a macroscopic 25 mm diameter piezoelectric membrane. A power of 1.8 mW was generated at the resonance frequency (2.58 kHz) across a 56 k optimal resistor and for a 2 g acceleration.

The rapid development of low power consumption electronics and the possibility of harvesting energy from environmental sources can make totally autonomous wireless devices. Using piezoelectric materials to convert the mechanical energy into electrical energy for batteries of wireless devices in order to extend the lifetime is the focus in many researches in the recent years. It is important and efficient to improve the energy harvesting by designing an optimal interface between piezoelectric device and the load. In this paper, a self-powered piezoelectric energy harvesting device is proposed based on the velocity control synchronized switching technique (V-SSHI). Comparing to the standard full bridge rectifier technique, the synchronized switching harvesting on inductor (SSHI) technique can highly improve harvesting efficiency. However, in real applications when the energy harvesting device is associated with wireless sensor network (WSN), the SSHI technique needs to be implemented and requires being self-powered. The conventional technique to implement self-powered SSHI is to use bipolar transistors as voltage peak detector. In this paper, a new self-powered device is proposed, using velocity control to switch the MOSFET more accurately than in the conventional technique. The concept of design and the theoretical analysis are presented in detail. Experimental results are examined.

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Abstract.With the decrease in energy consumption of portable electronic devices, the concept of harvesting renewable energy in human surrounding arouses a renewed interest. In this context, we have developed a piezoelectric generator that harvests mechanical vibrations energy available on a bicycle. Embarked piezoelectric transducer, which is an electromechanical converter, undergoes mechanical vibrations therefore produce electricity. A static converter transforms the electrical energy in a suitable form to the targeted portable application. Values of generated electrical power are reported and commented.

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In this paper, we propose a new design procedure to determine the optimal size of a piezoelectric transformer (PT) for DC/DC converter applications. We examined several parameters, which allows us to produce a piezoelectric transformer with optimal efficiency and which has an optimal range for regulating voltage. The characteristics of a piezoelectric transformer (PT) are well known when the load impedance is a pure resistor. However, when piezoelectric transformers are used in AC/DC or DC/DC converter applications, it requires the presence of a rectifier circuit block. A rectifier is usually a nonlinear device which does not act like a pure resistor. We began by modeling a full-wave rectifier directly in order to understand the design constraint variables such as the maximum mechanical current, the piezoelectric transformer configuration, and the energy balance of the PT configuration. In our final design, a stacked disk-type piezoelectric transformer with radial-mode vibration was chosen due to the large number of design parameters required. In our new design procedure, instead of just looking at the typical optimal loading condition of the PT, we used the concept of a maximum mechanical current to determine the new optimal efficiency which is suitable for voltage regulation. From our results we found that the size of the piezoelectric transformer and efficiency are trade-offs which means that they have an inverse relationship. In summary, we developed a new design procedure to determine the optimal size of a piezoelectric transformer, which we found to be small but with high efficiency so as to provide an optimal range for regulating voltage.

In this work we proposed a new mechanical method of implementing the synchronized switching technique for piezoelectric energy harvesting based on reed switches. Serving as a mechanical displacement monitor and the switch itself, it holds the merit of non-contact, persistence, and the low voltage threshold of merely a single PN junction. However, as all mechanical switches inherits chattering, or bouncing, energy loss and damping on the inversion was caused. To side pass the chattering, three types of electro-mechanical hybrid switches were furthermore developed to stabilize the interfered current flow: resistor-capacitor snubbers, inductor-capacitor snubbers, and silicon controlled rectifiers (SCRs). Each of the method has its merit and suitable working conditions. Comparing to conventional electrical switches, the proposed switches, greatly reduced the switch impedance since the mechanical switch part provides a physically open switch, and the electrical switch part merely consist of either a diode and a MOSFET pair, or a single SCR. Subsequently, the power loss due to the circuit was efficiently eliminated.

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