Dedicated algorithm and software for the integrated analysis of AC and DC electrical outputs of piezoelectric vibration energy harvesters

摘要

DC electrical outputs of a piezoelectric vibration energy harvester by nonlinear rectifying circuitry can hardly be obtained either by any mathematical models developed so far or by finite element analysis. To address the issue, this work used an equivalent electrical circuit model and newly developed an algorithm to efficiently identify relevant circuit parameters of arbitrarily-shaped cantilevered piezoelectric energy harvesters. The developed algorithm was then realized as a dedicated software module by adopting ANSYS finite element analysis software for the parameters identification and the Tcl/Tk programming language for a graphical user interface and linkage with ANSYS. For verifications, various AC electrical outputs by the developed software were compared with those by traditional finite element analysis. DC electrical outputs through rectifying circuitry were also examined for varying values of the smoothing capacitance and load resistance.