Piezoelectric MEMS Energy Harvesting Systems Driven by Harmonic and Random Vibrations

Switching power conditioning techniques are known to greatly enhance the performance of linear piezoelectric energy harvesters subject to harmonic vibrations. With such circuits, little is known about the effect of mechanical stoppers that limit the motion or about waveforms other than harmonic vibrations. This work presents SPICE simulations of piezoelectric micro energy harvester systems that differ in choice of power conditioning circuits and stopper models. We consider in detail both harmonic and random vibrations. The nonlinear switching conversion circuitry performs better than simple passive circuitry, especially when mechanical stoppers are in effect. Stopper loss is important under broadband vibrations. Stoppers limit the output power for sinusoidal excitations, but result in the same output power whether the stoppers are lossy or not. When the mechanical stoppers are hit by the proof mass during high-amplitude vibrations, nonlinear effects such as saturation and jumps are present.