Modeling and analysis of piezoelectric bimorph cantilever used for vibration energy harvesting

Piezoelectric vibration energy harvester has the advantage of high power density, and is promising in self-powered wireless sensor networks. The electromechanical coupling model has been formulated for cantilever bimorph vibration energy harvester under capacitive loads using piezoelectric theory and Euler-Bernoulli beam theory. Simulink simulation is used to obtain the steady-state characteristics, and the relationship between maximum output power, vibration frequency and substrate acceleration is characterized. An approximate linear analytical model is fitted using nonlinear least square method.