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*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
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*Piezoelectric Vibration Energy Harvesting:*
<span style="color: #222222">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.</span>
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<span style="color: #222222">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).</span>
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<span style="color: #222222"><strong>Figure 1:</strong> A cantilevered bimorph piezoelectric vibration energy harvester.</span>
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<span style="color: #222222"><strong>Specific Project Description:</strong></span>
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).
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- (b)
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*Figure 2:* (a) SSDCI circuit schematic and (b) its voltage waveforms
<span style="color: #222222">This project will involve an interdisciplinary team of M.Eng. students from the ECE and MAE departments to explore, implement, and compareexplore passive,the mechanical,effects andof microcontroller-based methods for conditioning SSDCI on the poweraeroelastic fromflutter aenergy cantileveredharvesters. bimorph piezoelectric beam. They The focus will be compared based on overall efficiency andtwo-fold: 1) the effect of the robustnessuse of the SSDCI designtechnique on tothe variationsbehavior inof the vibrationaeroelastic flutter energy source.</span>
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*Figure 2:* (a) SSDCI circuit schematic and (b) its voltage waveformsharvester and 2) the issues relating to power overhead and additional power production of the experimentally implemented SSDCI technique.</span>
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\[1\] 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. |
