Piezoelectric Bender Transducers for Energy Harvesting Applications

This paper presents the main characteristics of an experimental energy harvesting device that can be used to recover energy from the vehicular traffic as well as from the train and pedestrian ones. The innovation introduced arises from the use of piezoelectric bender devices instead of piezoelectric stack transducers. The patent focuses on the definition and specification of an innovative mechanical configuration to transfer the vibration from the main box to the piezoelectric transducer. The flexibility of the patent allows modifying the oscillation frequency of the overall structure in order to match the resonance frequency of the piezos. The description of the energy harvesting device is followed by preliminary numerical analyses performed, by using the commercial FE code Comsol Multyphisics®, in order to highlight the dynamical electromechanical behavior of the overall structure under the effect of an impulse load.