Performance of a Piezoelectric Energy Harvester under Vibrations Taken from a Helicopter

This paper compares performance of a piezoelectric vibration energy harvester, in terms of output power, under different types of vibration. The most common method used to characterize a vibration energy harvester is to excite the energy harvester under a sinusoidal vibration of its resonant frequency and measure the voltage across certain electrical loads. However, in practical applications, the vibration spectrum usually contains multiple peaks at different frequencies. In this research, a piezoelectric energy harvester was tested under vibration taken from a PZL-SW4 helicopter and the charging rate was compared with that when excited with sinusoidal vibration at the resonant frequency.