Energy Harvesting from Vibrating Cantilever Structure of Different Base Materials using Piezoelectric Material: Theoretical and Experimental Approach

Energy conversion from one form to the other forms the basis for many inventions. Non utilized energy of mechanical vibration has attracted many researchers to focus on energy harvesting from vibrating structures. Piezoelectric material when attached to a vibrating structure converts mechanical energy into electrical energy. Today, harvesting energy ranges from micro level to macro level and has obtained its importance in wide range of real time application such as from low powered electronic devices to solar, wind and hydroelectric energy systems, respectively. The current work presents a detailed theoretical and experimental study on a cantilever type beam structure embedded with piezoelectric material on different base materials to understand micro level energy harvesting. Euler Bernoulli beam theory based mathematical model is excited with an impulse load at the free end for a broader frequency spectrum analysis. Finally, the proposed energy harvesters, cantilever specimens of three different base materials are ranked based on their maximum voltage and maximum instantaneous power outputs experimentally for the given impulse excitation. Out of three base materials considered steel and copper-based energy harvesters generated a maximum voltage output of 0.16mV and 0.13mV, respectively which corresponds to a maximum instantaneous power output of approximately 1.96nW and 1.69nW, respectively. Aluminum-based energy harvester performed the least among the three contributing to 0.81nW. © 2023 Materials and Energy Research Center. All rights reserved.