This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I research project is to develop, fabricate, and characterize a new type of cost effective high performance vibration energy harvester. The use of piezoelectric benders for vibration energy harvesters has been limited due to their low energy output, high vibrational frequency requirement, and narrow frequency bandwidth. Several configurations of these energy harvesters will be fabricated that are predicted to offer up to 1.45 times higher voltage and up to 9.6 times higher current output capability over conventional monolithic and composite energy harvesters. In addition, these new harvesters offer up to 5 times lower resonance frequency and up to 10 times wider bandwidth.
The proposed harvesters are projected to satisfy the powering requirements for ubiquitously deployed transportation and industrial sensor networks and mobile electronics, eliminating the need for battery recharging, replacement, and disposal. For wireless sensor networks, the proposed energy harvester will eliminate power consumption from the mains power, data cable and power cable installation and maintenance, and battery cost, replacement, and disposal. In addition, sensor data can be used to facilitate structural health monitoring and condition based maintenance of transportation infrastructure, power generation structures, and air, water, and ground transportation vehicles, which can result in multi-billion dollar savings by avoiding catastrophic failures, eliminating unnecessary scheduled maintenance, and reducing maintenance costs.
