• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.549-563
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• 2012

Theoretical analysis is performed on a multi-mode energy harvester design with focus on the first two vibration modes. Based on the analysis, a modification is proposed for designing a novel adaptive multi-mode energy harvester. The device comprises a simply supported beam with distributed mass and piezoelectric elements, and an adaptive damper that provides a 180 degree phase shift for the motions of two supports only at the second vibration mode. Theoretical analysis and numerical simulations show that the new design can efficiently scavenge energy at the first two vibration modes. The energy harvesting capability of the multi-mode energy harvester is also compared with that of a cantilever-based energy harvester for single-mode vibration. The results show that the energy harvesting capacity is affected by the damping ratios of different designs. For fixed damping ratio and design dimensions, the multi-mode design has higher energy harvesting capacity than the cantilever-based design.

• Journal of the Korean Physical Society
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• v.73 no.12
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• pp.1889-1894
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• 2018

An innovative small-scale piezoelectric energy harvester has been proposed to gather wind energy. A conventional horizontal-axis wind power generation has a low generating efficiency at low wind speed. To overcome this weakness, we designed a piezoelectric windmill optimized at low-speed wind. A piezoelectric device having high energy conversion efficiency is used in a small windmill. The maximum output power of the windmill was about 3.14 mW when wind speed was 1.94 m/s. Finally, the output power and the efficiency of the system were compared with a conventional wind power system. This work will be beneficial for the piezoelectric energy harvesting technology to be applied to the real world such as wireless sensor networks (WSN).

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.25 no.9
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• pp.702-710
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• 2012

Eco-friendly $(Na,K)NbO_3$ (NKN)-based piezoelectric ceramic materials were fabricated by conventional ceramic method for shear mode piezoelectric energy harvesting application. $NKN-LiTaO_3$ (LT) based compositions were adopted for the high $d_{15}{\times}g_{15}$ which is proportional to harvested energy density. The composition $0.935(Na_{0.535}K_{0.485})NbO_3-0.065LiTaO_3$ was found to be lie on the boundary of tetragonal and orthorhombic phases. With reducing Ta content, the dielectric constant decreased gradually while maintaining high $d_{15}$, which resulted in increased $d_{15}{\times}g_{15}$. The composition $0.935(Na_{0.535}K_{0.485})NbO_3-0.065Li(Nb_{0.990}Ta_{0.010})O_3$ was found to possess excellent piezoelectric and electromechanical properties ($d_{15}{\times}g_{15}=29\;pm^2/N$, $d_{15}$ = 417 pC/N, $k_{15}$ = 0.55), and high curie temperature ($T_c=455^{\circ}C$).

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.263-263
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• 2007

In the future, self-contained sensors and processing units will need on-board, renewable power supplies to be truly autonomous. One way of supplying such power is through energy harvesting, processes by which ambient forms of energy are converted into electricity. One energy harvesting technique involves converting kinetic energy, in the form of vibrations, into electrical energy through the use of piezoelectric materials. Researchers are currently investigating how piezoelectric materials can be used to harvest power. This study examines the use of auxiliary structures, consisting of a mechanical fixture and a lead zirconate/lead titanate (PZT) piezoelectric element, which can be attached to any boundary conditions vibrating beam of the any boundary conditions. Adjusting various boundary conditions of these structures can maximize the strain induced in the attached PZT element and improve power output.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.159-166
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• 2011

Green house gas emissions are increasing as development of the industrial economy of the international community. Many countries in the world are endeavoring to reduce green house gas emissions under severe climate change. In order to protect grobal warming, government is trying to reduce green gas emissions under "Low Carbon Green Growth Policy" and investing climiate-firendly industries such as renewable energy harvesting. Renewable energy has been rapidly developing as a result of investment for development technology of using natural energy such as solar, wind, tidal, etc. There are lots of waste energy in the road space. However, nobody is not interested in waste energy from the road space. This paper present a fundamentally experimental study of energy harvesting technique to use waste energy in the road. The waste energy in the road is covered a pressure and impact of vehicles on the road, the radiant heat from asphalt pavement, road noise and vibration etc. In this study, an energy harvesting device using piezoelectric element is proposed and various tests are conducted to investigate a characteristic of this device as function of impact loading based on piezoelectric effect behavior. This paper shows the energy harvesting results of the device using domestic piezoelectirc element as a function of impact load size and pavement types.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.247-256
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• 2005

In order to harvest power in an efficient manner from a micro piezoelectric (PZT) device for charging the battery of a remote system, a new AC/DC resonant pulse power converter is proposed. The proposed power converter has two stages in the power conversion process. The first stage includes N-type MOSFET full bridge rectifier. The second stage includes a boost converter having an N-type MOSFET and a P-type MOSFET. MOSFETs work in the $1^{st}$ or $3^{rd}$ quadrant region. A small inductor for the boost converter is assigned in order to make the size of the power converter as small as possible, which makes the on-interval of the MOSFET switch of the boost converter ultimately short. Due to this short on-interval, the parasitic junction capacitances of MOSFETs affect the performance of the power converter system. In this paper, the performance of the new converter is analytically and experimentally evaluated with consideration of the parasitic capacitance of switching devices.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.70-76
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• 2017

The pollution problem of fossil energy sources has caused the development of green energy harvesting systems. Piezoelectric energy harvesting technology has been developed under those external environmental factors. A piezoelectric energy harvester can be defined as a device which transforms mechanical vibration or impact energy into electrical energy. Most researches have focused on bender structures. However, these have a limitation on energy efficiency because of the small effective electromechanical coupling factor, around 10%. Therefore, we should look for a new design for energy harvesting. A cymbal energy harvester can be a good candidate for the high-power energy harvester because it uses a high amplification mechanism using endcaps while keeping a higher electromechanical coupling factor. In this research, we focused on energy efficiency improvements of the cymbal energy harvester by changing the polarization direction, because the electromechanical coupling factor of the k33 mode and the k15 mode is larger than that of the k31 mode. Theoretically, we checked the cymbal harvester with radial polarization and it could obtain 6 times larger energy than that with the k31 direction polarization. Furthermore, we verified the theoretical expectation using the finite element method program. Consequently, we could expect a more efficient cymbal harvester with the radial polarization by comparing two polarization directions.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.220-221
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• 2008

With recent advanced in portable electric devices, wireless sensor, MEMS and bio-Mechanics device, the new typed power supply, not conventional battery but self-powered energy source is needed. Particularly, the system that harvests from their environments are interests for use in self powered devices. For very low powered devices, environmental energy may be enough to use power source. Therefore, in other to made piezoelectric energy harvesting device. The made 31 type triple-morph cantilever was resulted from the conditions of 100k$\Omega$, 0.25g, 154Hz respectively. The thick film was prepared at the condition of $6.57V_{rms}$, and its power was $432.31{\mu}W$ and its thickness was $50{\mu}m$.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.688-694
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• 2009

In this paper, we present the results of a preliminary study on the piezoelectric energy harvesting performance of a Zr-doped $PbMg_{1/3}Nb_{2/3}O_3-PbTiO_3$ (PMN-PZT) single crystal beam. A novel piezoelectric beam cantilever structure is used to demonstrate the feasibility of generating AC voltage during a state of vibration. The energy-harvesting capability of a PMN-PZT beam is calculated and tested. The frequency response of the cantilever device shows that the first mode resonance frequency of the excitation model exists in the neighborhood of several hundreds of hertz, which is similar to the calculated value. These tests show that several significantly open AC voltages and sub-mW power are achieved. To test the possibility of a small scale power source for a ubiquitous sensor network service, energy conversion and the testing of storage experiment are also carried out.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.364-368
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• 2013

Vibrational energy harvester based on piezoelectricity has been expected to be the dominant energy harvesting technology due to the advantages of high conversion efficiency, light weight and small size, night operation, etc. Its commercialization is just around the corner but the integration with power management electronics should be solved in advance. In this paper, therefore, fully-integrated design environment for piezoelectric energy harvesting systems is presented to assist co-design with the power management electronics. The proposed design environment is capable of analyzing the energy harvester including the package-induced damping effects and simulating the device and its power management electronics simultaneously. When the developed design environment was applied to the fabricated device, the simulated resonant frequency matched well with the experimental result with a difference of 2.97% only. Also, the complex transient response was completed in short simulation time of 3,001 seconds including the displacement distribution over the device geometry. Furthermore, a full-bridge power management circuit was modeled and simulated with the energy harvester simultaneously. Therefore the proposed, fully-integrated design environment is accurate and fast enough for the contribution on successful commercialization of piezoelectric energy harvester.