Modeling, Simulation and Optimization of Piezoelectric Bimorph Transducer for Broadband Vibration Energy Harvesting

Abstract

We demonstrate the detailed analysis for conversion of piezoelectric properties into compliance matrix and simulate a series bimorph configuration for vibration based energy generation. Commercially available software COMSOL Multiphysics was used to apply boundary conditions for optimization of geometric parameters such as length, width and thickness of piezoelectric layer to study voltage and power characteristics of the harvester. The resulting energy harvester was found to generate 1.73 mW at 53.4 Hz across a 3MW load with an energy density of 13.08mJ/cm3. We also investigated feasibility of this model by comparing it with existing experimental data of known piezoelectric ceramic compositions and found good correlation between the two.