Towards the development of efficient low frequency piezoelectric energy harvesters

Piezoelectric energy harvesters are being examined thoroughly as a potential source of electrical power when harnessing surrounding mechanical vibrations. In literature, high frequency energy harvesters are discussed in sufficient details. The development of piezoelectric energy harvester becomes extremely challenging when source vibration frequency is very low. This is due to incompatible stiffness over mass ratio of piezoelectric device for resonance. This paper addresses the issues involved with the piezoelectric energy harvesting using the very low frequency mechanical vibrations of 2Hz or less. The generated maximum power from THUNDER, Macro Fibre Composite (MFC) and Polyvinylidene flouride (PVDF) devices are compared with the conventional PbZrO3-PbTiO3 (PZT) bimorph devices under varying input displacements and forces.

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