Self-Powered Electronics for Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting Devices

International audienc

Energy harvesting technologies for structural health monitoring of airplane components - a review

With the aim of increasing the efficiency of maintenance and fuel usage in airplanes, structural health monitoring (SHM) of critical composite structures is increasingly expected and required. The optimized usage of this concept is subject of intensive work in the framework of the EU COST Action CA18203 "Optimising Design for Inspection" (ODIN). In this context, a thorough review of a broad range of energy harvesting (EH) technologies to be potentially used as power sources for the acoustic emission and guided wave propagation sensors of the considered SHM systems, as well as for the respective data elaboration and wireless communication modules, is provided in this work. EH devices based on the usage of kinetic energy, thermal gradients, solar radiation, airflow, and other viable energy sources, proposed so far in the literature, are thus described with a critical review of the respective specific power levels, of their potential placement on airplanes, as well as the consequently necessary power management architectures. The guidelines provided for the selection of the most appropriate EH and power management technologies create the preconditions to develop a new class of autonomous sensor nodes for the in-process, non-destructive SHM of airplane components.The work of S. Zelenika, P. Gljušcic, E. Kamenar and Ž. Vrcan is partly enabled by using the equipment funded via the EU European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) project no. RC.2.2.06-0001: “Research Infrastructure for Campus-based Laboratories at the University of Rijeka (RISK)” and partly supported by the University of Rijeka, Croatia, project uniri-tehnic-18-32 „Advanced mechatronics devices for smart technological solutions“. Z. Hadas, P. Tofel and O. Ševecek acknowledge the support provided via the Czech Science Foundation project GA19-17457S „Manufacturing and analysis of flexible piezoelectric layers for smart engineering”. J. Hlinka, F. Ksica and O. Rubes gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by the ESIF, EU Operational Programme Research, Development and Education within the research project Center of Advanced Aerospace Technology (Reg. No.: CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000826) at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Brno University of Technology. V. Pakrashi would like to acknowledge UCD Energy Institute, Marine and Renewable Energy Ireland (MaREI) centre Ireland, Strengthening Infrastructure Risk Assessment in the Atlantic Area (SIRMA) Grant No. EAPA\826/2018, EU INTERREG Atlantic Area and Aquaculture Operations with Reliable Flexible Shielding Technologies for Prevention of Infestation in Offshore and Coastal Areas (FLEXAQUA), MarTera Era-Net cofund PBA/BIO/18/02 projects. The work of J.P.B. Silva is partially supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) in the framework of the Strategic Funding UIDB/FIS/04650/2020. M. Mrlik gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic-DKRVO (RP/CPS/2020/003

Energy Harvesting for Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems

Tire pressure monitoring systems (TPMSs) predict over- and underinflated tires, and warn the driver in critical situations. Today, battery powered TPMSs suffer from limited energy. New sensor features such as friction determination or aquaplaning detection require even more energy and would significantly decrease the TPMS lifetime. Harvesting electrical energy inside the tire of a vehicle has been considered as a promising alternative to overcome the limited lifetime of a battery. However, it is a real challenge to design a system, that generates electrical energy at low velocities while being robust at 200 km/h where radial accelerations up to 20000 m/s2 occur. This work focusses on developing different electromechanical energy transducers that meet the high requirements of the automotive sector. Different approaches are addressed on how the change of acceleration and strain within the tire can be used to provide mechanical energy to the energy harvester. The energy harvester converts the mechanical energy into electrical energy. In this thesis, piezoelectric and electromagnetic transducers are discussed in depth, modelled as electromechanical networks. Since the transducers provide energy in the form of an AC voltage, but sensors require a DC voltage, various common interface circuits are compared, using LTspice and applying method of the stochastic signal analysis. Furthermore, a buck-boost converter concept for the electromagnetic energy harvester is optimized and improved. Experiments on a tire test rig validate the theoretically determined output and confirm that well designed energy harvesters in the tire can generate much more energy than required by an TPMS not only at high velocities but also at velocities as low as 20 km/h

Adaptive Maximum Power Point Finding Using Direct VOC/2 Tracking Method with Microwatt Power Consumption for Energy Harvesting

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from IEEE via the DOI in this record.Maximum power transfer occurs in many energy harvesters at their half open-circuit voltage (VOC/2). A novel implementation method of maximum power point finding based on the VOC/2 method is presented by exploiting the capacitor charging voltage across a capacitor connected in parallel with the energy harvester. The presented technique has a specifically designed high-pass filter which has a peak output voltage that corresponds to the VOC/2 of the energy harvester. The control circuit filters and differentiates the voltage across the smoothing capacitor to directly determine the timing of reaching the VOC/2 of the energy harvester without having to find the VOC first, and is fully implemented using discrete analog components without the need of a microcontroller, leading to low power consumption of the method. In this paper, the control circuit is used in conjunction with a full wave diode bridge rectifier and a dc-dc converter to harvest energy from a piezoelectric energy harvester (PEH) as the studied case. The PEH was subjected to various strain levels at low frequencies from 2 to 10 Hz. Experimental results show that the implemented circuit is adaptive to various vibration amplitudes and frequencies and has a maximum power point finding efficiency of up to 98.28% with power consumption as low as 5.16 μW.Funding Agency: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Counci

Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting: Enhancing Power Output by Device Optimisation and Circuit Techniques

Energy harvesting; that is, harvesting small amounts of energy from environmental sources such as solar, air flow or vibrations using small-scale (≈1cm 3 ) devices, offers the prospect of powering portable electronic devices such as GPS receivers and mobile phones, and sensing devices used in remote applications: wireless sensor nodes, without the use of batteries. Numerous studies have shown that power densities of energy harvesting devices can be hundreds of µW; however the literature also reveals that power requirements of many electronic devices are in the mW range. Therefore, a key challenge for the successful deployment of energy harvesting technology remains, in many cases, the provision of adequate power. This thesis aims to address this challenge by investigating two methods of enhancing the power output of a piezoelectric-based vibration energy harvesting device. Cont/d

Circuits and Systems for Energy Harvesting and Internet of Things Applications

The Internet of Things (IoT) continues its growing trend, while new “smart” objects are con-stantly being developed and commercialized in the market. Under this paradigm, every common object will be soon connected to the Internet: mobile and wearable devices, electric appliances, home electronics and even cars will have Internet connectivity. Not only that, but a variety of wireless sensors are being proposed for different consumer and industrial applications. With the possibility of having hundreds of billions of IoT objects deployed all around us in the coming years, the social implications and the economic impact of IoT technology needs to be seriously considered. There are still many challenges, however, awaiting a solution in order to realize this future vision of a connected world. A very important bottleneck is the limited lifetime of battery powered wireless devices. Fully depleted batteries need to be replaced, which in perspective would generate costly maintenance requirements and environmental pollution. However, a very plausible solution to this dilemma can be found in harvesting energy from the ambient. This dissertation focuses in the design of circuits and system for energy harvesting and Internet of Things applications. The first part of this dissertation introduces the research motivation and fundamentals of energy harvesting and power management units (PMUs). The architecture of IoT sensor nodes and PMUs is examined to observe the limitations of modern energy harvesting systems. Moreover, several architectures for multisource harvesting are reviewed, providing a background for the research presented here. Then, a new fully integrated system architecture for multisource energy harvesting is presented. The design methodology, implementation, trade-offs and measurement results of the proposed system are described. The second part of this dissertation focus on the design and implementation of low-power wireless sensor nodes for precision agriculture. First, a sensor node incorporating solar energy harvesting and a dynamic power management strategy is presented. The operation of a wireless sensor network for soil parameter estimation, consisting of four nodes is demonstrated. After that, a solar thermoelectric generator (STEG) prototype for powering a wireless sensor node is proposed. The implemented solar thermoelectric generator demonstrates to be an alternative way to harvest ambient energy, opening the possibility for its use in agricultural and environmental applications. The open problems in energy harvesting for IoT devices are discussed at the end, to delineate the possible future work to improve the performance of EH systems. For all the presented works, proof-of-concept prototypes were fabricated and tested. The measured results are used to verify their correct operation and performance

Energy Harvesting and Energy Storage Systems

This book discuss the recent developments in energy harvesting and energy storage systems. Sustainable development systems are based on three pillars: economic development, environmental stewardship, and social equity. One of the guiding principles for finding the balance between these pillars is to limit the use of non-renewable energy sources

Piezoelectric energy harvesting : enhancing power output by device optimisation and circuit techniques

Energy harvesting; that is, harvesting small amounts of energy from environmental sources such as solar, air flow or vibrations using small-scale (≈1cm 3 ) devices, offers the prospect of powering portable electronic devices such as GPS receivers and mobile phones, and sensing devices used in remote applications: wireless sensor nodes, without the use of batteries. Numerous studies have shown that power densities of energy harvesting devices can be hundreds of µW; however the literature also reveals that power requirements of many electronic devices are in the mW range. Therefore, a key challenge for the successful deployment of energy harvesting technology remains, in many cases, the provision of adequate power. This thesis aims to address this challenge by investigating two methods of enhancing the power output of a piezoelectric-based vibration energy harvesting device. Cont/d.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Ultra wide-bandwidth micro energy harvester

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 189-197).An ultra wide-bandwidth resonating thin film PZT MEMS energy harvester has been designed, modeled, fabricated and tested. It harvests energy from parasitic ambient vibration at a wide range of amplitude and frequency via piezoelectric effect. At the present time, the designs of most piezoelectric energy devices have been based on high-Q linear cantilever beams that use the bending strain to generate electrical charge via piezoelectric effect. They suffer from very small bandwidth and low power density which prevents them from practical use. Contrarily, the new design utilizes the tensile stretching strain in doubly-anchored beams. The resultant stiffness nonlinearity due to the stretching provides a passive feedback and consequently a wide-band resonance. This wide bandwidth of resonance enables a robust power generation amid the uncertainty of the input vibration spectrum. The device is micro-fabricated by a combination of surface and bulk micro-machining processes. Released devices are packaged, poled and electro-mechanically tested to verify the wide-bandwidth nonlinear behavior of the system. Two orders of magnitude improvement in bandwidth and power density is demonstrated by comparing the frequency response of the system with that of an equivalent linear harvester with a similar Q-factor.by Arman Hajati.Ph.D

Harvesting vibration energy by employing piezoelectricity and electromagnetism

1 online resource (141,16 unnumbered pages) : colour illustrations, charts (some colour), graphs (some colour)Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references (pages 122-136).Many energy technologies have their environmental footprint. However, energy from renewable sources does not. Venturing into green ways of producing energy is the order of the day. This project aims at generating energy from vibrations created in pedestrian movement through the joint application of piezoelectricity and electro-magnetism. Harvesting vibration energy through these two methods would be to harness what would otherwise be a largely unharnessed energy source. Piezoelectricity offers an advantage over other generation schemes by generating electricity “intrinsically,” obviating the need for moving parts and mechanical complexity. Electro-magnetism, on the other hand, does involve moving parts but is much less complex compared to other renewable energy technologies. This project dwells deeply into weighing the pros and cons of employing these two technologies and assessing whether, together, they would be a good contender to other existing renewable energy sources in the context of being a feasible micro-power generator