Energy harvesting from locomotive and coaches by piezoelectric ceramic using MEMS technology

A MEMS based piezoelectric energy harvesting system is designed to convert vibration energy of Railway locomotive and coaches during running time in to electrical power via piezoelectric effect. The paper mainly focuses on obtaining maximum energy from PZT - 5A Piezoelectric ceramic. A MEMS based Cantilever beam shape piezoelectric ceramic had been designed for harvesting energy with vibration of Locomotive and Coaches. The pressure obtained by Locomotive and Coaches has been subjected to cantilever shaped piezoelectric transducer in order to obtained maximum energy. A unimorph cantilever shaped piezoelectric transducer with electrode of Aluminum has been designed. FEM simulation using COMSOL multiphysics had been performed with different types of metals, different electrodes gaps, and different meshing configuration and result is analyzed and compared. The unimorph cantilever shaped piezoelectric Ceramic with dimensions of 600×450×10 μm give maximum power of 1.288 mW with voltage 50.767 and maximum displacement of 10.676 um is obtained by the locomotive and power of 0.6990mW with voltage 37.391 and displacement of 5.62 μm from coaches obtained in d33 mode when load of 4100 N for locomotive and 2500 N coaches is applied at low frequency.