11-06-2012, 05:38 PM
GENERATING ELECTRICITY USING PIEZOELECTRIC MATERIAL
PIEZOELECTRIC MATERIAL.pdf (Size: 139.26 KB / Downloads: 32)
INTRODUCTION
The recent fluctuations on the price of petroleum have affected worldwide economics which
has forced an increased in the price of other items including food. Some even linked the recent
collapse of few financial institutions in countries such US and theUKto the recent increased in
this price. This shows that we are too dependent to petroleum as a source of electrical power.
Besides, petroleum as a source of electrical energy has contributed to severe air pollution
problem. Therefore, an alternative method to produced electricity has to be put in place.
THEORETICAL DEVELOPMENTAND SIMULATION
There are two theoretical models normally used to predict the power output from piezoelectric
film attached to a beam namely pin-force and Euler-Bernoulli methods (Eggborn, 2003). Their
main difference is the way to model the interaction between host structure and the piezo-film.
The predicted voltage outputs for pin-force and Euler-Bernoulli are, respectively
Harvesting Electrical Energy From the Piezo-film.
The investigation shows that the power output from a single piezo-film was very low in the range
of 0.2 W. Therefore, direct application of the piezo-film as a power source is not practical. It is
unavoidable to use a storage device to collect theweak power output for future usage. Fortunately,
the voltage outputs from a single piezo-film can produce a root-mean-squared voltage of 1.18 V
which is high enough to store the generated electricity into a small nickel metal hydride battery.
Figure 4 shows the charging time of a 1.2V-2500 mAh nickel metal hydride battery at random
force and at resonance frequency, respectively.