Performance evaluation of a novel piezoelectric-based high-frequency surge-inducing synchronized switching strategy for micro-scale energy harvesting

Energy harvesting technology has recently received remarkable attention in line with progressive developments in low-power-consuming microsystems used in daily applications. In particular, piezoelectric elements have received considerable attention for promising energy harvesting systems because of their applicability and simplicity. In this study, a high-frequency surge-inducing synchronized switching (H-S3HI) strategy that exploits the full potential of the surge phenomenon is proposed to effectively improve the energy harvesting efficiency of piezoelectric harvesters. Moreover, this strategy can guarantee the useable energy harvesting performance even for micro-scale vibrations. The effectiveness of the proposed switching strategy was demonstrated by performing numerical simulations and experiments with a cantilever-type piezoelectric harvester under sinusoidal and random-vibration conditions.