• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
• /
• v.17 no.4
• /
• pp.267-272
• /
• 2008

Energy harvesting from the vibration through the piezoelectric effect has been studied for powering the small wireless sensor nodes. As piezoelectric uni-morph cantilever structure can transfer low vibration to large displacement, this structure was commonly deployed to harvest electric energy from vibrations. Through our previous results, when stress was applied on the cantilever, stress was concentrated on the certain point of the ceramic of the cantilever. In this study, for miniaturing the energy harvester, we investigated how the size of ceramics and the stress distribution in ceramic affects energy harvester characteristics. Even though the area of ceramic was 28.6 % decreased from $10{\times}35{\times}0.5mm^3$ to $10{\times}25{\times}0.5mm^3$, both samples showed almost same maximum power of 0.45 mW and the electro-mechanical coupling factor ($K_{31}$) of 14 % as well. This result indicated that should be preferentially considered to generate high power with small size energy harvester.

• Journal of Power System Engineering
• /
• v.15 no.5
• /
• pp.49-53
• /
• 2011

This study concerns about wireless power generation that uses the energy harvester with EAP actuator. The UWSN(Underwater Wireless Sensor Network) has been considered many times by many researches. Because the information of underwater is getting important to secure the resource or to predict the meteorological phenomena. But the sensor node in the UWSN is driven by the acoustic wave to communicate with other sensor node. And this acoustic wave usually spends a 100 times energy than the RF(Radio Frequency) wave due to transfermation medium(sea water). Therefore the power source of the sensor node is very important that is needed to improve in the UWSN. For this purpose, the energy harvester is made by the acrylic elastomer in this study. And the electrode is modified with an aluminum impurity to improve the efficiency of energy harvester. After that, the modified energy harvester is experimented to confirm the improvement of the energy efficiency.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
• /
• 2008.11a
• /
• pp.625-626
• /
• 2008

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
• /
• v.20 no.1
• /
• pp.25-29
• /
• 2011

This paper describes the design and analyses of vibration driven electromagnetic energy harvester with high power generation which is suitable for supplying power generator from human body motion. The proposed harvester consists of magnet, coil, and SM (Soft magnetic Material). In order to generate more induced voltage, the SM to concentrate flux lines from end of magnetic poles was arranged into insert moving magnet. Each model was designed and analyzed by using ANSYS software to simulation. The maximum power is generated when load resistance of $1303\;{\Omega}$ is equal to coil resistance. The generated maximum power of for harvesters with SM is $677.85\;{\mu}W$ and 5.46 times higher than without SM at 6 Hz vibration frequency.

• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• v.26 no.6
• /
• pp.681-692
• /
• 2020

Conventional Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters (CPEH) have been extensively studied for maximizing their electrical output through material selection, geometric and structural optimization, and adoption of efficient interface circuits. In this paper, the performance of Stepped Piezoelectric Energy Harvester (SPEH) under harmonic base excitation is studied analytically, numerically and experimentally. The motivation is to compare the energy harvesting performance of CPEH and SPEHs with the same characteristics (resonant frequency). The results of this study challenge the notion of achieving higher voltage and power output through incorporation of geometric discontinuities such as step sections in the harvester beams. A CPEH consists of substrate material with a patch of piezoelectric material bonded over it and a tip mass at the free end to tune the resonant frequency. A SPEH is designed by introducing a step section near the root of substrate beam to induce higher dynamic strain for maximizing the electrical output. The incorporation of step section reduces the stiffness and consequently, a lower tip mass is used with SPEH to match the resonant frequency to that of CPEH. Moreover, the electromechanical coupling coefficient, forcing function and damping are significantly influenced because of the inclusion of step section, which consequently affects harvester's output. Three different configurations of SPEHs characterized by the same resonant frequency as that of CPEH are designed and analyzed using linear electromechanical model and their performances are compared. The variation of strain on the harvester beams is obtained using finite element analysis. The prototypes of CPEH and SPEHs are fabricated and experimentally tested. It is shown that the power output from SPEHs is lower than the CPEH. When the prototypes with resonant frequencies in the range of 56-56.5 Hz are tested at 1 m/s2, three SPEHs generate power output of 482 μW, 424 μW and 228 μW when compared with 674 μW from CPEH. It is concluded that the advantage of increasing dynamic strain using step section is negated by increase in damping and decrease in forcing function. However, SPEHs show slightly better performance in terms of specific power and thus making them suitable for practical scenarios where the ratio of power to system mass is critical.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
• /
• v.25 no.1
• /
• pp.62-67
• /
• 2012

Owing to the rapid growth of mobile and electronic equipment miniaturization technology, the supply of micro mobile computing machine has been fast raised. Accordingly they have performed many researches on energy harvesting technology to provide promising power supply equipment to substitute existing batteries. In this paper, in order to have low resonance frequency for piezoelectric energy harvester, we have tried to make it larger than before by adopting nickel that has much higher density than silicon. We have applied it for our energy harvesting actuator instead of the existing silicon based actuator. Through such new concept and approach, we have designed energy harvesting device and made it personally by making with micromachining process. The energy harvester structure has a cantilever type and has a dimension of $10{\times}2.5{\times}0.1\;mm^3$ for length, width and thickness respectively. Its electrode type is formed by using Au/Ti of interdigitate d33 mode. The pattern size and gap size is 50 ${\mu}m$. Based on the measurement of the nickel-based piezoelectric energy harvester, it is found to have 778 Hz for a resonant frequency with no proof mass. In that resonance frequency we could get a maximum output power of 76 ${\mu}W$ at 4.8 $M{\Omega}$ being applied with 1 g acceleration.

• Journal of Magnetics
• /
• v.20 no.3
• /
• pp.252-257
• /
• 2015

This paper investigates the concept and implementation of an energy harvesting device using a ferrofluid sloshing movement to generate an electromotive force (EMF). Ferrofluids are often applied to energy harvesting devices because they have both magnetic properties and fluidity, and they behave similarly to a soft ferromagnetic substance. In addition, a ferrofluid can change its shape freely and generate an EMF from small vibrations. The existing energy harvesting techniques, for example those using piezoelectric and thermoelectric devices, generate minimal electric power, as low as a few micro-watts. Through flow analysis of ferrofluids and examination of the magnetic circuit characteristics of the resultant electromagnetic system, an energy harvester model based on an electromagnetic field generated by a ferrofluid is developed and proposed. The feasibility of the proposed scheme is demonstrated and its EMF characteristics are discussed based on experimental data.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
• /
• v.25 no.5
• /
• pp.371-376
• /
• 2016

A self-powered piezoelectric energy harvester was developed for the application in wireless sensor node. The energy harvester was evaluated with power generation characteristics for the wireless sensor node for structural diagnosis of the electric power system. The self-powered wireless sensor node was set to measure temperature, vibration frequency of the electric power system. A piezoelectric harvester composed of 7 uni-morph cantilevers (functionalized as 6 generators and 1 vibration sensor) was connected to be an array and revealed to produce significantly high output power of approximately 10 mW at 120 Hz under 3.4 g((1 g = $9.8m/sec^2$). The wireless sensor node could work as the electric power generated by the developed piezoelectric harvester.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
• /
• v.19 no.4
• /
• pp.393-399
• /
• 2009

Historically, industrial condition monitoring has been performed by costly hard-wired sensors or infrequent checks by maintenance personnel equipped with hand held monitoring equipment. Self- powered wireless condition monitoring systems provides on-line monitoring of critical plant and machinery providing major operating cost benefits. A vibration energy harvester(VEH) is a device that converts kinetic energy occurred by machine vibration into useable electrical energy. Using VEHs to power wireless monitoring systems can yield significant benefits: increased reliability, lower life time costs and no battery disposal issues, etc. This paper proposes the novel prototype design and manufacturing of a VEH that can eliminate the effect by failed batteries.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
• /
• v.34 no.6
• /
• pp.416-425
• /
• 2021

In the 4^th industrial age, electronic devices are becoming smaller and lighter with a low power consumption to overcome spatial limitation. The piezoelectric energy harvesters can convert mechanical kinetic energy into electric energy; thus, enabling the operation of small electronic devices. Recently, various piezoelectric harvesters have been reported and the electric output from these harvesters could be anticipated by theoretical analysis methods. For example, COMSOL Multiphysics software provides a theoretical simulation of piezoelectric effect with a combination of mechanical and electrical phenomena in the piezoelectric materials. This article introduces a brief modeling of piezoelectric harvester to investigate mechanical stress and electrical output of harvesting devices by the COMSOL Multiphysics software.