Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting Based on Vertical Vibration of Car Body Induced by Road Surface Roughness

This paper presents the analysis of a cantilevered piezoelectric energy harvester (PEH) under the random vibration excitation of the car body. A two degree-of-freedom (2-DOF) quarter car model is established. The Matlab/Simulink simulation software is used to analyze the dynamic response of the car body under the random road excitation. The transient analysis of the PEH is carried out using ANSYS software to obtain the time-dependent voltage, current and power outputs of the PEH. The root mean square (RMS) power is used to evaluate the electricity generation of the PEH. The effect of the load resistance, the car speed, and the road surface roughness on RMS power are studied. The results show that it exists the optimal load resistance to achieve the maximum RMS power output for the vibration-based PEH. When the road surface roughness is constant, the increase of the car speed can induce the increase of the RMS power of the PEH. When the car speed is constant, higher RMS power outputs of the PEH can be achieved by increasing road surface roughness coefficient. (paper)