Investigation of the cantilever beam for piezoelectric energy harvesting

The next generation of the wireless sensors networks and wearable electronics has high needs for ceaseless energy supply. As a rule, nowadays wireless nodes and wearable electronics are powered by the conventional batteries. This technology of the power supply has huge number of disadvantages such as short life time, high costs of service and etc. Hence, the conventional batteries should be replaced by other power supply technology. The most promising technology which could replace the conventional batteries is ambient energy harvesting. During last few decades researchers proposed several ways for energy harvesting from environmental, but the most attractive technology became the piezoelectric energy harvesting. The main advantages of the piezoelectric energy harvesting are ability of life time power supply, high power density, simple construction and low cost. This paper represents analytical model and FEM based investigation of the rectangular cantilever beams for the piezoelectric energy harvesting. Main aim of the research is optimization of the cantilever beam geometry in order to obtain suitable characteristics for effective energy harvesting. For FEM simulation Comsol 5.2 was employed.