Design of MEMS-Based Piezoelectric Energy Harvester for Low-Frequency Applications

This chapter presents the design and FEM analysis of a P-VEH device suitable for practical application. A cantilever-based P-VEH design has been selected because it has lower resonance frequency and high sensitivity which can harvest optimal power from the ambient vibrations. A detailed analysis has been done using FEM tool COMSOL Multiphysics®. Effect of each design parameters such as length, width and thickness of the beam on the cantilever deflection, stress and electric potential generated have been investigated. Parametric variation study has been done where each parameter is increased individually, and the effect on the device performance is investigated. This study enables to optimize the device parameters and select the dimensions which are best suitable for a specific application.