Analysis of Energy Harvesting Enhancement in Piezoelectric Unimorph Cantilevers

Abstract

Environmental energy harvesting is a major operation in research and industries. Currently, researchers have started analyzing small-scale energy scavengers for the supply of energy in low-power electrical appliances. One area of interest is the use of piezoelectric materials, especially in the presence of mechanical vibrations. This study analyzed a unimorph cantilever beam in different modes by evaluating the effects of various parameters, such as geometry, piezoelectric material, lengths of layers, and the proof mass to the energy harvesting process. The finite element method was employed for analysis. The proposed model was designed and simulated in COMSOL Multiphysics, and the output parameters, i.e., natural frequencies and the output voltage, were then evaluated. The results suggested a considerable effect of geometrical and physical parameters on the energy harvesters and could lead to designing devices with a higher functional efficiency.

Pendulum-Based River Current Energy Converter for Hydrometric Monitoring Systems

“…With the increase in demand for distributed sensor networks, great focus has been devoted to harvesting environmental energy in order to replace batteries and extend the sensor nodes' lifetime [1][2][3][4] in wireless sensor networks. Considering the cost and the environmental issues, ambient energy provides key benefits to be considered as one of the major sources of energy in the future [5,6].…”