Study of Charging Efficiency of a Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting System Using Rectifier and Array Configuration

Abstract

This paper suggests the design in rectifier and array configuration for an impact-based piezoelectric energy harvesting (PEH) system, to investigate the charging efficiency. In the design of the rectifier, it is suggested that rectifying the signal from each piezoelectric module separately generates more electrical energy and charges a capacitor faster than using a single rectifier for all modules connected in series. In the structural design, the array was designed into two conditions: impacted simultaneously and impacted sequentially with a phase difference (30°, 60°, 90°, 120°, 150° and 180°). We show that when impacted sequentially with a phase difference, this allows faster charging rates of energy harvesting. Additionally, distribution of the torque required to transform the piezoelectric modules was found to be another advantage from this condition. These results could be used in the design of more-efficiently-charging impact-based PEH system.