Energy Harvesting Characteristics of Spring Supported Piezoelectric Cantilever Structure (SPCS)

Spring supported piezoelectric cantilever structures (SPCS) were fabricated for vibration-based energy harvester application. We selected four elastic springs (A, B, C, and D type) as cantilever`s supporter, each elastic spring has a different spring constant (S). The C type of SPCS (: 4,649 N/m) showed a extremely low resonance frequency of 81 Hz along with the highest power output of 38.5 mW while the A type of SPCS (: 40,629 N/m) didn`t show a resonance frequency while. Therefore, it is considered that the lower spring constant lead to a lower resonance frequency of the SPCS. In addition, a tip mass (18 g) at one end of the SPCS could further reduce the resonance frequency without heavy degradation of power output.