Sensor shape design for piezoelectric cantilever beams to harvest vibration energy

Energy harvesting for the purpose of powering low power electronic sensor systems has received explosive attention in the last few years. A common device uses the piezoelectric effect for a cantilever beams at resonance to harvest ambient vibration energy. However most of these devices have a rectangular piezoelectric patch covering all or part of the beam. This paper considers the optimum design of such a device, and in particular investigates the effect that the size and shape of piezoelectric sensor has on the harvested energy. It is shown that significant increases in harvested energy may be obtained by optimising the sensor design. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3457330]