A smart and self-sufficient frequency tunable vibration energy harvester

We present a piezoelectric energy-harvesting system, which is able to self-tune its resonance frequency in an energy-autonomous way, in order to extend its efficient operation over a large frequency range. The system consists of a resonant and frequency-tunable piezoelectric generator and a control unit. In predefined temporal intervals, the control unit analyzes the ambient vibration frequency, decides whether an adjustment of the generator's resonance frequency is necessary or not and delivers the appropriate voltage to a piezoelectric actuator which alters the generator's mechanical stiffness to tune its resonance frequency. The control unit has been optimized to an ultralow power consumption which means that up to 90% of the harvested energy can be fed to the powered electrical load, which could be an embedded system. With frequency-tunable generators, the application range of vibration energy harvesters can be extended to environments with a non-constant vibration frequency, like e. g. the surface of an engine with a varying number of revolutions per minute. Furthermore, the presented system opens the door to off-the-shelf solutions for environments with constant but uncommon vibration frequencies. With the smart tuning algorithm presented in this work, our system is even able to compensate typical weak points of piezoelectrically tunable harvesters, like e. g. hysteresis effects, the temperature dependence of the mechanical stiffness and aging effects.