Piezoelectric energy harvesting using stochastic resonance in rotating systems

Abstract

Sensors can be found virtually anywhere in today’s society. With the ever developing technologies around us, the number of sensors is set to increase even faster in the near future. The Internet of Things and self-driving cars are just some of the emerging technologies that use huge amounts of sensors, and with these sensors comes the power demand of each of them. Today batteries are still the dominant power supply for sensors, however, energy harvesting technologies are in development to replace them. This thesis examines the possibility to use a piezoelectric harvester to power a sensor mounted on a flexplate in a combustion engine. By studying current technologies, a concept was established and with simulations and experiments it was evaluated. The concept combined two previous designs and eliminated components previously used, creating a smaller harvester. The final harvester was based on an off the shelf piezoelectric harvester where the proof mass and placement of the harvester was simulated in order to optimize the performance. The simulation on the final design show a peak power of 370 μW and a 3 dB bandwidth of 2.44 Hz, promising results that could be used as the foundation in the development of a functional harvester.