A miniature piezoelectric energy harvester for air flows

This paper describes design, simulation, fabrication, and testing of a miniature wind energy harvester based on a flapping cantilevered piezoelectric beam. The wind generator is based on oscillations of a cantilever that faces the direction of the airflow. The oscillation is amplified by interactions between an aerofoil attached on the cantilever and a bluff body placed in front of the aerofoil. A piezoelectric transducer with screen printed PZT materials is used to extract electrical energy. To achieve the optimum design of the harvester, both computational simulations and experiments have been carried out to investigate the structure. A prototype of the wind harvester, with the volume of 37.5 cm³ in total, was fabricated by thick-film screen printing technique. Wind tunnel test results are presented to determine the optimum structure and to characterize the performance of the harvester. The optimized device finally achieved a working wind speed range from 2 m/s to 8 m/s. The power output was ranging from 0.35 to 3.6 μW and the open-circuit output voltage was from 0.6V to 1.9V.