Design, analysis and testing of a piezoelectric flex transducer for harvesting bio-kinetic energy

Abstract

The increasing prevalence of low power consuming electronics brings greater potential to mobile energy harvesting devices as a possible power source. A new piezoelectric energy harvesting device, called the piezoelectric flex transducer (PFT), is presented and developed. A Finite Element Model (FEM) was developed to design and analyse the PFT. The PFT consists of a piezoelectric element sandwiched between substrate layers and metal endcaps that are able to amplify the axial force on the piezoelectric element. Based on the concept of the Cymbal transducer, the PFT can withstand higher forces, was retrofitted into a shoe and used to power a wireless sensor module whilst the subject with a body weight of 760N was wearing the shoe and ran at 3.1mph (1.4HZ on shoe), the PFT produced an average maximum power of 2.5mW (over 2M? load).