Investigation of Design Parameters and Actuator Constraints in Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters

Abstract

Research in the field of Vibration Energy Harvesting is becoming significant day-by-day due to the revolutionary evolvement of Electronic devices and their power requirements. In this context vibration induced energy harvesters using piezoelectric actuators are developed. In this paper such a piezoelectric device is modelled and analyzed in this paper. Modal and harmonic analysis were performed to investigate the performance of the energy harvester when the actuators are constrained in two ways: half constrained; completely constrained; within the shell of the harvester. The induced voltage on the piezoelectric discs is monitored at the modal frequencies and the best possible case from this analysis is identified.