On the design guidelines for miniaturizing thermo-magnetically activated piezoelectric energy generator

This article deals with experimental testing of a thermo-mangetically activated piezoelectric generator, we provide breakthrough in addressing the miniaturization issue of such power generators by reporting design rules. Three main design parameters were derived: the transducer's geometry, the gap distance, and the magnetic volume. Special attention was put into the design geometry of the transducer and the magnetic volume. Three different design were tested and compared. These tests revealed that correlated reduction of the transducer and magnets dimensions meant reduction of thermal operating cycles. An increase of 35% in power density is obtained by combining design strategies like to increase the transducer resonant frequency and to uniform distributed strain. An output power density during operating transition of 11.3mW/cm³ is reached. (paper)