Rotational Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting: A Comprehensive Review on Excitation Elements, Designs, and Performances

Abstract

Rotational Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting (RPZTEH) is widely used due to mechanical rotational input power availability in industrial and natural environments. This paper reviews the recent studies and research in RPZTEH based on its excitation elements and design and their influence on performance. It presents different groups for comparison according to their mechanical inputs and applications, such as fluid (air or water) movement, human motion, rotational vehicle tires, and other rotational operational principal including gears. The work emphasises the discussion of different types of excitations elements, such as mass weight, magnetic force, gravity force, centrifugal force, gears teeth, and impact force, to show their effect on enhancing output power. It revealed that a small compact design with the use of magnetic, gravity, and centrifugal forces as excitation elements and a fixed piezoelectric to avoid a slip ring had a good influence on output power optimisation. One of the interesting designs that future works should focus on is using gear for frequency up-conversion to enhance output power density and keep the design simple and compact.

Parametric and Experimental Modeling of Axial-Type Piezoelectric Energy Generator with Active Base

“…Basic information about energy generators, as well as problems arising in the development of energy storage devices using piezoelectric elements, were discussed in review articles [11][12][13][14][15]. The primary analysis of review articles shows that models are considered that use piezoelectric elements operating in compression and buckling with tension.…”

“…As the literature reviews [12][13][14][15][16][17] show, the most common element in the generator is a cantilever or a linear type element that is fixed at one or two points. There are schemes with fastening of bending elements in the form of a truss structure.…”

Vibration Energy Harvesting from Raindrops Impacts: Experimental Tests and Interpretative Models

“…Most of the proposed raindrop harvesters directly exploit the bending strain of beams or membranes hit by the raindrops in order to generate electric energy via the piezoelectric effect [5,7]. However, there are some interesting examples of rotational piezoelectric harvesters [8,9]. In this case, the raindrops cause the rotation of a small rain-mill that in turn bends a series of piezoelectric cantilevers that generate electrical energy.…”

Design and performance of flexible polymeric piezoelectric energy harvesters for battery-less tyre sensors

“…A variety of PEHs has been proposed to be fabricated for powering such sensors in tyres; different categories of piezoelectric materials were previously investigated and reported in the literature [4,8,[10][11][12][13][14]. Several studies proposed multiple designs of piezoelectric ceramic disks with a metal electrode mounted in tyres, which were able to generate the electrical power over a wide range of running speeds of a tyre, 30-180 km h −1 [15][16][17].…”