Pressure simulation for footstep energy harvesting paver

Amongst all the energy sources from human motion, footstep has the potential of producing electrical energy as an alternative source to non-conventional renewable energy. Researchers have shown that human footstep kinetic energy can be converted to electrical energy by devised mechanism for low power application such as powering lights, radio and charging phones. Eventually, a novel fluid based energy harvesting paver was developed and tested to contribute towards sustainable development. The paver uses mini hydro generators to produce energy as fluid is forced through these mini hydro generators upon human stepping. This paper presents the pressure simulation of fluid bag system when subjected to an applied human force and the quarter ellipsoid shaped proved to be the best performer which can produce upto 1.4J per step. The pressure simulation provides a relation between pressure and output power

Footstep energy harvesting using heel strike-induced airflow for human activity sensing

Body sensor networks are increasingly popular in healthcare, sports, military and security. However, the power supply from conventional batteries is a key bottleneck for the development of body condition monitoring. Energy harvesting from human motion to power wearable or implantable devices is a promising alternative. This paper presents an airflow energy harvester to harness human motion energy from footsteps. An air bladder-turbine energy harvester is designed to convert the footstep motion into electrical energy. The bladders are embedded in shoes to induce airflow from foot-strikes. The turbine is employed to generate electrical energy from airflow. The design parameters of the turbine rotor, including the blade number and the inner diameter of the blades (the diameter of the turbine shaft), were optimized using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method. A prototype was developed and tested with footsteps from a 65 kg person. The peak output power of the harvester was first measured for different resistive loads and showed a maximum value of 90.6 mW with a 30.4 Ω load. The harvested energy was then regulated and stored in a power management circuit. 14.8 mJ was stored in the circuit from 165 footsteps, which means 90 μJ was obtained per footstep. The regulated energy was finally used to fully power a fitness tracker which consists of a pedometer and a Bluetooth module. 7.38 mJ was consumed by the tracker per Bluetooth configuration and data transmission. The tracker operated normally with the harvester working continuously