The Power of Design: Product Innovation in Sustainable Energy Technologies

3.9 Piezoelectric Energy Conversions

Alexandre Paternoster, Pieter de Jong, André de Boer

University of Twente, Faculty of Engineering Technology, Department of Applied Mechanics, P.O. Box 217, The Netherlands

3.9.1 Introduction

Power harvesting using piezoelectric material is a technique that can be useful to power remote or inaccessible sensors. For any location where only a relatively short cable must be drawn, power harvesting is not an option because the engineering and material cost required to develop a power harvester may be significant. This technique is strictly limited to remote use for sensor systems and needs special electronic circuits for generating useful power efficiently.

Applications will range from the nano-Watt to the Watt range, with the latter requiring in the order of 20–30 cubic cm of piezo material. Piezo materials do not possess the energy-density potential to compete with more traditional large-scale means of generating electricity. Some applications are depicted in Figure 3.9.1.

Figure 3.9.1 Applications of power harvesting using piezoelectric material. (a) Vortex shedding in a water flow (Taylor, 2001), (b) impress of an insole in a shoe (Kymissis et al., 1998), and (c) motion of a backpack (Feenstra, Granstrom, and Sodano, 2008)

3.9.2 Piezoelectric Material

Introduction

Since its discovery by the Curie brothers in 1880, piezoelectric materials have ...