Design of test bench apparatus for piezoelectric energy harvesters

This thesis presents the design and analysis of an experimental test bench for the characterization of piezoelectric microelectromechanical system (MEMS) energy harvester being developed by the Micro & Nano Systems Laboratory research group at MIT. Piezoelectric MEMS energy harvesters are micro-devices that are able to harvest energy from their ambient vibrations using piezoelectric material property, and many different designs are being researched by the Micro & Nano Systems Laboratory. In order to analyze the different designs, it is crucial to have a flexible test bench, and the test bench created in this thesis allows data to be gathered easily from different energy harvesters. After the test bench is designed and created, it is used to excite a linear cantilever beam energy harvester system at different frequencies and values for open circuit voltage, resonance frequency, and maximum power are calculated from the collected experimental data. In addition, theory behind linear and nonlinear energy harvester systems is investigated and important definitions, characteristics, and equations are summarized in this thesis.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2013

Author dc:creator

• Yoon, You C. (You Chang)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Sang-Gook Kim.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/86267

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/86267