A Study on the Power Generation Capacity of Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters with Different Fixation Modes and Adjustment Methods

The power generation capacity of piezoelectric energy harvesters (PEHs) is not only related to the properties of the piezoelectric material, the vibration magnitude and the subsequent conditioning circuit, but also to the fixation modes and adjustment methods. In this paper, a commercial piezoelectric ceramic plate (PCP) in simply supported beam fixation mode and cantilever beam fixation mode were analyzed through finite element simulations and experiments, and furthermore, two ways of adjusting the natural frequency of PCP are studied and compared. As a result, some guidelines are proposed for the application of PCPs according to the simulation and experimental results which showed that: (1) the simply supported beam fixation mode is suitable for environments in which the exciting frequency exceeds 50 Hz, while the cantilever beam fixation mode fits the circumstance where the exciting frequency is below 50 Hz; (2) the maximum generation power a PCP produces in simply supported beam fixation mode is larger than that in cantilever beam fixation mode; (3) adjusting the weight of the mass block affixed on the PCP can change the natural frequency of PCP more efficiently than length-width ratio does.