A compound cantilever beam piezoelectric harvester based on wind energy excitation

In this paper, a compound cantilever beam based piezoelectric energy harvester (CCBPH) is proposed. This piezoelectric energy harvester uses vibrations caused by vortex excitation behind the winding fluid to harvest wind energy. In particular, this structure uses vortex excitation formed behind a vertically suspended cylindrical winding fluid to cause the vibration of the cylindrical winding fluid, which then indirectly excites the piezoelectric element. The CCBPH consists of a fixed support, a cantilever beam, magnet-1 and magnet-2, a support beam, two piezoelectric units-PVDF (polyvinylidene fluoride), a compound cantilever beam, and a cylindrical winding fluid. We investigated the parameters affecting the structure and verify the effectiveness of the energy harvester through the design of the structure, simulation analysis, and experiments. The experimental results show that the CCBPH can obtain the maximum output voltage from the energy harvester at a wind speed of 18 m/s. The maximum output power was achieved with an external load resistance of 2000 kΩ. By comparison, it is found that the maximum output power is 0.095 mW when the distance between two magnets is 20 mm and the mass ratio is 1:2 for copper.