Joint modeling of piezoelectric transducers and power conversion circuits for energy harvesting applications

This paper describes a reliable modeling technique for piezoelectric transducers and a procedure for identifying model parameters with few simple measurements and standard laboratory equipment. Direct measurements were taken on commercial Q220-A4-303YB piezoelectric transducers from Piezo Systems in a cantilever configuration with tip masses from 6 g to 18 g. For validation purposes, the behavior of the equivalent electromechanical circuits was simulated and compared to direct observations in real operating conditions. The model showed to predict with a high degree of accuracy both the frequency response of the transducers and the effects due to the presence of non-linear power converters which are usually ignored by conventional models presented in literature.