Characteristics of the Piezoelectric Generator Using Circular Type Bender.

The Piezoelectric generator for energy harvesting is usually using rectangular type unimorph or bimorph. In this paper, the characteristic of the piezoelectric generator which has a circular type bender was studied for more efficiently converting the mechanical energy to electrical energy than the rectangular type. The generator consisted of circular type vibrating plate, thin piezoelectric ceramics, stub and mass. The generator was simulated with FEM(finite element method) program as changing size of each part. When the radius of the piezoelectric ceramics and the elastic body were increased and the diameter of the vibrating plate was increased, the resonant frequency was decreased. And the output voltage was increased when the radius of the elastic body was increased. The output voltage was also affected by the distance which is the mass position from center of unimorph. The piezoelectric generator was fabricated from these simulated results. The output power was 4.3[mW] when the weight of mass was 7.2g. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]