Experimental and Modelling Study of a Piezoelectric Energy Harvester Unimorph Cantilever Arrays

Abstract

The electrical output parameters and mode shapes of multiple piezoelectric unimorph cantilever beams (UCB’s) with same thickness and different length reported and examined. Connecting arrays of 5 commercial unimorph beams made of polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) in series showed widening in the bandwidth and increasing in the power magnitude of energy harvester comparing to single unimorph beam. The output power was increased from 2 µW to 5 µW and the bandwidth was widened from (47, 55) Hz to (22, 88) Hz. Finite element analysis (FEA) was used to investigate about the first fifth mode shapes of the suggested system using COMSOL multi-physics, with a good agreement between model and experiment.

Keywords

• Piezoelectric
• Unimorph
• PVDF
• Mode shapes
• Modelling
• FEA
• COMSOL.