High performance piezoelectric vibration energy reclamation

A new approach of energy reclamation from mechanical vibrations is presented in this paper. The conversion from IF mechanical energy into electrical energy is achieved using piezoelectric materials. The originality of the proposed approach is based on a nonlinear treatment of the voltage delivered by a piezoelectric insert embedded in a vibrating structure. This nonlinear processing induces a strong increase of the power conversion capability of the piezoelectric insert. The theoretical principle of the nonlinear treatment is exposed, and the analytical model of an electrical generator a is developed. The results given by the model are compared to those of an experimental set-up. Experimental results C show that the extracted electrical energy may be increased beyond 400%.