A Preliminary Study of Piezoelectric Vibration Energy Harvester for Vibration Condition Monitoring Applications of Rotating Machinery

Rotating machinery is widely used in the industrial plant, for example, power plant, chemical plant, mass-production plant and so on. In order to ensure safety operation of the rotating machinery, vibration condition monitoring of the machinery can play a crucial role. In this study, the cantilever type of vibration energy harvester is designed for vibration condition monitoring applications of rotating machinery. The mechanical resonant frequency of piezoelectric bimorph cantilever will be tuned to the rotating speed of the machinery. Recently, new d31 type Macro-Fiber Composite (MFC) can be commercially available. Due to the d31 configuration, electrical impedance of new MFC is much smaller than that of previous d33 type MFC. This study experimentally compares the ability two types of MFC, d31 and d33 configurations, to generate electrical energy when subjected to mechanical vibration.