Mechanically Coupled Cantilever Beam Structure for Wideband Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting

Abstract

In this work, we report the mechanical coupling of the cantilever beams in a cascaded configuration employed using long and thin spring-like structures to increase the bandwidth for vibration energy harvesting. The outcomes of designing uni-beam, dual-beam, tri-beam, and quad-beam coupled energy harvesters are compared using COMSOL. Simulation results indicated that quad-beam coupled energy harvesters had a bandwidth of 8.9 Hz. Physical devices were fabricated and tested using PVDF-TrFE piezoelectric material.