Energy Harvesting Application Using Piezoelectric Actuators

8 Energy Harvesting Application Using Piezoelectric Actuators 

Energy harvesting may be useful to energize low consumption sensors or radio emitters, without using batteries. For instance, health monitoring sensors embedded in a aircraft may benefit from this approach, since the vibration of the aircraft would be used to supply the sensor. As a result, the cables routing is no longer necessary. 

A demonstrator has been built [20] to show the interest of the piezoelectric actuator in this technique (Fig. 6.31). When the vibration is in the range 100... 400 Hz, the required piezoelectric actuators are much more compact than any electromagnetic actuators. Secondly, an efficiency in the range of 50% has been demonstrated. 

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