Design and performance enhancement of a force-amplified piezoelectric stack energy harvester under pressure fluctuations in hydraulic pipeline systems

Structural health monitoring is of great significance to ensure the safety of marine pipes, while powering the required monitoring sensors remains a problem because the ocean environment is not amenable to the traditional ways of providing an external power supply. However, mechanical energy due to the vortex-induced vibration of pipelines may be harvested to power those sensors, which is a convenient, economic and environmentally friendly way. We here exploit a contact-separation mode triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) to create an efficient energy harvester to transform the mechanical energy of vibrating pipes into electrical energy. The TENG device is composed of a tribo-pair of dielectric material films that is connected to a mass-spring base to guarantee the contact-separation motions of the tribo-pair. Experimental tests are conducted to demonstrate the output performance and long-term durability of the TENG device by attaching it to a sample pipe. A theoretical model for the energy harvesting system is developed for predicting the electrical output performance of the device. It is established that the normalized output power depends only on two compound variables with all typical factors taken into consideration simultaneously. The simple scale law is useful to reveal the underlying mechanism of the device and can guideline the optimization of the device based on multi-parameters analyses. The results here may provide references for designing contact-mode TENG energy harvesting devices based on the vibration of marine pipes and similar structures.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Contact-Mode Triboelectric Nanogenerator for Energy Harvesting from Marine Pipe Vibrations

Zhang

Wang

et al. 2021

“…Although their proposed harvesters report AC power up to 13 mW for a pressure amplitude of 2 bar, they have not shown any evaluation of the harvester in a fully integrated system. Another PFEH using a piezoelectric stack was reported by [ 14 ]. The PFEH was designed with an amplified stack structure operating in a water system with a static pressure of 2 bar.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For higher static pressures, which are more common in industrial hydraulic systems, resonant structures are not practical as they may fail due to the high stresses [ 4 , 8 , 16 , 17 ]. Compared with the other PFEH designs, the advantages of the PFEH with multilayer piezoelectric stack, as reported in [ 4 , 7 , 8 , 14 ], are the higher static pressure rating and the advantages of the stack for off-resonance energy generation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self-Powered Wireless Sensor Using a Pressure Fluctuation Energy Harvester

Aranda

Bader

Oelmann

2021

Condition monitoring devices in hydraulic systems that use batteries or require wired infrastructure have drawbacks that affect their installation, maintenance costs, and deployment flexibility. Energy harvesting technologies can serve as an alternative power supply for system loads, eliminating batteries and wiring requirements. Despite the interest in pressure fluctuation energy harvesters, few studies consider end-to-end implementations, especially for cases with low-amplitude pressure fluctuations. This generates a research gap regarding the practical amount of energy available to the load under these conditions, as well as interface circuit requirements and techniques for efficient energy conversion. In this paper, we present a self-powered sensor that integrates an energy harvester and a wireless sensing system. The energy harvester converts pressure fluctuations in hydraulic systems into electrical energy using an acoustic resonator, a piezoelectric stack, and an interface circuit. The prototype wireless sensor consists of an industrial pressure sensor and a low-power Bluetooth System-on-chip that samples and wirelessly transmits pressure data. We present a subsystem analysis and a full system implementation that considers hydraulic systems with pressure fluctuation amplitudes of less than 1 bar and frequencies of less than 300 Hz. The study examines the frequency response of the energy harvester, the performance of the interface circuit, and the advantages of using an active power improvement unit adapted for piezoelectric stacks. We show that the interface circuit used improves the performance of the energy harvester compared to previous similar studies, showing more power generation compared to the standard interface. Experimental measurements show that the self-powered sensor system can start up by harvesting energy from pressure fluctuations with amplitudes starting at 0.2 bar at 200 Hz. It can also sample and transmit sensor data at a rate of 100 Hz at 0.7 bar at 200 Hz. The system is implemented with off-the-shelf circuits.

“…For flow-induced vibration-based solutions, both air [14][15][16] and water flows [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] can be exploited using piezoelectric transducers to produce electricity. Regarding water flow solutions, Allen et al [17] and Taylor et al [18] produced an energy harvesting eel, which consisted of a piezoelectric membrane placed in the wake of a bluff body to benefit from the generated von Kármán streets to produce electricity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They measured the efficiency of the system, and different simulations were conducted for providing guidelines for the practical design of an energy harvester. Cao et al [ 23 ] designed a force-amplified stack energy harvester for hydraulic pipeline systems. The piezoelectric energy harvester took advantage of the pressure fluctuations in the pipeline caused by unsteady flows.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting Controlled with an IGBT H-Bridge and Bidirectional Buck–Boost for Low-Cost 4G Devices

Teso-Fz-Betoño

Aramendia

Martinez-Rico

et al. 2020

In this work, a semi-submersible piezoelectric energy harvester was used to provide power to a low-cost 4G Arduino shield. Initially, unsteady Reynolds averaged Navier–Stokes (URANS)-based simulations were conducted to investigate the dynamic forces under different conditions. An adaptive differential evolution (JADE) multivariable optimization algorithm was used for the power calculations. After JADE optimization, a communication cycle was designed. The shield works in two modes: communication and power saving. The power-saving mode is active for 285 s and the communication mode for 15 s. This cycle consumes a determinate amount of power, which requires a specific piezoelectric material and, in some situations, an extra power device, such as a battery or supercapacitor. The piezoelectric device is able to work at the maximum power point using a specific Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) H-bridge controlled with a relay action. For the extra power supply, a bidirectional buck–boost converter was implemented to flow the energy in both directions. This electronic circuit was simulated to compare the extra power supply and the piezoelectric energy harvester behavior. Promising results were obtained in terms of power production and energy storage. We used 0.59, 0.67 and 1.69 W piezoelectric devices to provide the energy for the 4G shield and extra power supply device.