• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.29 no.12
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• pp.776-780
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• 2016

Recently, energy harvesting technology is increasing due to the fossil fuel shortages. To compensate problem of low generating power than other energy harvesters, many researchers have studied about piezoelectric harvester for obtaining high output. In this paper, four kinds of unimorph based piezoelectric harvesters were proposed and its generating characteristics were studied. Each of the piezoelectric harvesters has three, four, and six unimorph arms, respectively, and the arms are symmetrically arranged from one central point. The centrosymmetric structure of the harvesters guarantees more stable and multiplied generation than a cantilever-type harvester since the arms of the harvester resonate at same frequency. Resonance frequency, output voltage, displacement, and stress characteristics of the generator were analyzed by using a FEM (finite element method) program. Harvesters were fabricated on the basis of analysis results. Experimental results were compared with simulated results.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2009.04a
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• pp.456-457
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• 2009

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.313-319
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• 2010

Vibration energy harvesting is an attractive technique for potential powering of low power devices such as wireless sensors and portable electronic applications. Most energy generator developed to date are single vibration frequency based, and while some efforts have been made to broaden the frequency range of energy harvester. In this work, The effect of energy harvesting were investigated at various vibration frequencies, vibration beams, vibration point and test masses. The maximum output voltage of the bimorph piezoelectric cantilever was shifted according to vibration point. Vibration frequency with maximum output voltage decreased with the increasing length of vibration beam and increasing test mass. The sample with vibration beam length 0.5 L generated a peak output voltage of 32 $V_{rms}$ and shows a 45 % increase in voltage output in comparison to the corresponding original bimorph. It was found that a piezoelectric bimorph has a possibility to be as the energy harvesting cantilever, which is successfully tuned over a vibration frequency range to enable a maximum harvesting energy.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.25 no.7
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• pp.511-515
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• 2012

A road energy harvester was designed and fabricated to convert mechanical energy from the vehicle load to electrical energy. The road energy harvester is composed of 24 piezoelectric cantilevers and a vehicle load transfer mechanism. Applying a vehicle load transfer mechanism rather than directly installing energy harvesters under roads decreases the area of road construction and allows more energy harvesters to be installed on the side of the road. The power generation amount with respect to the vehicular velocity change was assessed by installing the vehicle load transfer mechanism and the energy harvester in the form of speed bumps and underground. The energy harvester installed in a speed bump form generated power of 7.61 mW at the vehicular velocity of 20 km/h. Also, power generation of the energy harvester installed in the underground form was 63.9 mW at the vehicular velocity of 28 km/h. Although the number of piezoelectric cantilevers was reduced by 1/3 to 24 in comparison to the previous research results with 72 piezoelectric cantilevers, similar power generation characteristic value was obtained within the vehicular velocity of 20 km/h by altering the vehicle load transfer mechanism and cantilever vibration method.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.107-113
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• 2017

Energy source of a piezo-electric harvester is vibration. Sources of vibration are machineries operated with high frequencies, constructions and people operated with low frequencies and etc. In this study, we tried to figure out power generation properties over vibrations upon angles of a piezo-cantilever for applying them to movements of the construction and/or people, which are vibration sources at low frequencies. A uni-morph cantilever with a $59mm{\times}29mm{\times}0.2mm$ piezo-electric element attached on a $71mm{\times}46mm{\times}0.25mm$ copperplate was used. A spring was attached to the lower side of the cantilever and a mass was attached on the opposite side. Also, a structure with a specific angle which is an angle in between the ground and the cantilever was prepared and then, connected to a spring or the cantilever. Then, this structure was divided into the A-type and B-type and excited in the direction of z- axis. After that, the angle between the ground and the cantilever was changed and excited by 1 to 10 Hz upon the existence of a spring and/or a mass to compare power generation properties.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.31-34
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• 2013

Based on the structural analysis of cantilever and the piezoelectric effect, we propose a new design of piezoelectric cantilever to harvest maximum vibration energy. Geometric parameters of piezoelectric cantilever are optimized according to two different types of cantilever structure. The main factors that affect the harvesting performance of the cantilever was the shape of the cantilever and the load at the free end. The amount of charge is affected by piezoelectric constant and mechanical strain of the cantilever.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.112-117
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• 2018

In this study, a bender-type piezoelectric energy harvester was fabricated and evaluated to compensate for the disadvantages of high-power generation only in the resonance frequency range of a piezoelectric harvester using a piezoelectric cantilever. The generated power was investigated according to various changes in the vibration environment. Compared with the piezoelectric cantilever module, the bender-type piezoelectric module showed a larger number of peak voltages. The primary peak voltage shifted toward the low frequency when the spring was coupled to the bender-type piezoelectric module. The harvester of the three bender-type modules had a vibration frequency exceeding 1 mW in the 34-45 Hz range and generated 3.112 mW of power at the vibration frequency of 38 Hz. The harvester of the six bender-type modules had a vibration frequency exceeding 1 mW in the 31-45 Hz range and generated 3.081 mW of power at the vibration frequency of 35 Hz.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.59 no.3
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• pp.581-587
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• 2010

Using piezoelectric elements to harvest energy from ambient vibrations has been of great interest over the past few years. Due to the relatively low power output of piezoelectric materials, there are many study to improve the energy harvesting efficiencies. This paper is study the efficiencies of the output energy considering the cantilever piezoelectric bimorph using aluminum vibration beam. when the length of vibration beam and the piezoelectric body becomes same and the maximum output power comes out. DC voltage was increased as the beam thickness and vibration frequency was increased. The vibration beam was able to achieve very large energy value.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2010.11a
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• pp.567-568
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• 2010

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.30 no.8
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• pp.501-507
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• 2017

A unimorph piezoelectric cantilever generator with an interdigitated electrode (IDE) was developed for vibration energy harvester applications driven in the longitudinal mode. Hard lead zirconate titanate (PZT) ceramic with a high $Q_m$ of 1,280 was used as the piezoelectric active material. Ten PZT sheets produced by tape casting were laminated and co-fired with an Ag/Pd IDE at $1,050^{\circ}C$ for 2 h. The approximately $280{\mu}m$-thick co-fired PZT laminate with the IDE was attached to a stainless steel substrate with an adhesive epoxy for the fabrication of an IDE unimorph cantilever. Its energy harvesting characteristics were evaluated: an output power of $1.1{\mu}W$ at 120 Hz across the resistive load of $700k{\Omega}$ was obtained, corresponding to a normalized power factor of $4.1{\mu}W/(G^2{\cdot}cm^3)$.