Power harvesting and management from vibrations: a multi-source strategy simulation for aircraft structure health monitoring

Vibration harvesting has been intensively developed recently and systems have been simulated and realized, but real-life situations (including aircraft Structure Health Monitoring (SHM)involve uneven, low amplitude, low frequency vibrations. In such an unfavorable case, it is very likely that no power can be harvested for a long time. To overcome this, multi-source harvesting is a relevant solution, and in our application both solar and thermal gradient sources are available. We propose in this paper a complete Microsystem including a piezoelectric vibration harvesting module, thermoelectric conversion module, signal processing electronics and supercapacitor. A model is proposed for these elements and a VHDL-AMS simulation of the whole system is presented, showing that the vibration harvesting device alone cannot supply properly a SHM wireless node. Its role is nevertheless important since it is a more reliable source than thermoelectric (which depends on climatic conditions). Moreover, synergies between vibration harvesting and thermoelectric scavenging circuits are presented.