Thermal network modelling of hybrid piezo-pyro transducer for application in energy harvesting

In the current era, due to global climate change, a lot of emphasis has now shifted towards energy harvesting and making our devices more efficient. In automobile industry, a lot of research is going on in the field of electric vehicles, even the conventional vehicles efficiency has also been greatly increased in the past decade. Today, a lot of automation in the vehicle is incorporated in order to reduce human errors while driving. With increase in number of sensors in a vehicle its energy consumption has increased. In order to maintain a vehicle’s energy efficiency, self-powered sensors are an interesting field to explore, which works on energy harvesting by various means. In this report, we present an optimized design of cantilevers fabricated over a block of thermally conductive pyroelectric block. Further, to do the modelling of the design we used thermal network modelling. It aims to validate a model of transducer for converting vibrational and thermal energy into electrical energy, for the application of energy harvesting in sensors for automobiles. This approach combines the pyroelectric, piezoelectric and thermal conductive properties of different material to enhance efficiency of the transducer hence, power output. In order to calculate theoretical efficiency more precisely, we propose the thermal network modelling.