Increasing the Power Output from Piezoelectric Vibration Energy Harvesters
Contact: Alex Schlichting – ads264@cornell.edu
Desired Student Researchers:
- Research Position 1: Microcontroller programming and hardware implementation. Significant experience required, ECE 4760 Digital System Design desired.
- Research Position 2: Wind tunnel experimentation. MAE 3780 Mechatronics required, MAE 4770 Engineering Vibrations desired
Piezoelectric Vibration Energy Harvesting:
The goal of energy harvesting systems is varied, but they all have the potential for making significant impacts in today's energy/resource-conscious society: structural health monitoring for bridges, ships, airplanes, and even wind turbine blades; wildlife tracking tags; wireless sensor nodes for collecting environmental data.
Piezoelectric energy harvesting systems are being developed by many researchers to capture ambient vibration energy. Every system typically consists of three different sections: the piezoelectric energy harvesting device (Figure 1), the power conditioning electronics, and the electronic system load (typically a microcontroller).
Figure 1: A cantilevered bimorph piezoelectric vibration energy harvester.
Specific Project Description:
The Laboratory for Intelligent Machine Systems has developed a piezoelectric power conditioning scheme, synchronized switching and discharging to a storage capacitor through an inductor (SSDCI), which experimentally increased the power output from a piezoelectric harvester by 200% [1] (Figure 2). The Lab has also developed piezoelectric energy harvesters which take advantage of the stable limit cycles which result from the aeroelastic flutter phenomenon[2] (Figure 1).
- (b)
Figure 2: (a) SSDCI circuit schematic and (b) its voltage waveforms
This project will involve an interdisciplinary team of students from the ECE and MAE departments to implement and explore the effects of SSDCI on the aeroelastic flutter energy harvesters. The focus will be two-fold: 1) the effect of the use of the SSDCI technique on the behavior of the aeroelastic flutter energy harvester and 2) the issues relating to power overhead and additional power production of the experimentally implemented SSDCI technique.
[1] Wu, W.J., et al., "Modeling and experimental verification of synchronized discharging techniques for boosting power harvesting from piezoelectric transducers," Smart Mater. Struct. Vol 18, No 5.055012, Pg. 1-14, 2009.
[2] Bryant, M. and Garcia, E., "Modeling and testing of a novel aeroelastic flutter energy harvester," J. Vib. and Acoustics, Vol. 133, No. 011010, Feb. 2011.