Investigation on the Selection of Piezoelectric Materials for the Design of an Energy Harvester System to Generate Energy from Traffic

Hiba Najini, Senthil Arumugam Muthukumaraswamy

This article investigates various existing piezoelectric materials and the structures of the piezoelectric transducers. Then the article explores the idea of using the electricity generated using piezoelectric elements and compares the energy requirement of this era of power electronics. Then, the most compatible piezoelectric transducer for producing sustainable energy from the road traffic was analyzed using the finite element analysis. This included the various structural designs of the piezoelectric harvester designs to determine the performance of the piezoelectric material. The structures focused on this article are namely the Pile type, Multilayered, Thunder, Bridge, Cymbal and Moonie piezoelectric generators. The finite element analysis was also used to categorize the chemical behavior of various piezoelectric elements. After which, the article focuses on the two main types of implementation of the piezoelectric generators on the road to produce the sustainable form of energy. This energy is captured by harnessing the wasted vibration and kinetic energy due to the moving vehicles on the surface of the road. These two main types of implementation include the cantilever beam type implementation such as the bimorph with a tip mass, which requires a fixed support. The other implementation was based on embedding the piezoelectric transducers into the road to harvest the strain and kinetic energy due to the vehicles directly.