PVDF energy harvester on flexible rings

In this paper, the elastic ring is laminated with a convolving PVDF layer on the ring´s inner surface for energy harvesting. With the segmentation technique, the piezoelectric layer is uniformly segmented into several energy harvesting patches. The generated energy is the function of electric signal and the capacitance of energy harvesting patch. For each harvester, the circumferential vibration induced modal energy, the transverse vibration induced modal energy and the total energy is evaluated. By discussing different case studies (e.g., harvester thickness and segment size), the maximum magnitudes of modal energies are plotted, compared and evaluated. When the segment size increases, the maximum energies exhibit the deficiency because of signal average and cancellation. This study is to serve as a design guideline to achieve a higher energy harvesting efficiency for practical applications.