A New Energy Harvesting Design Concept: Multimodal Energy Harvesting Skin

This paper proposes an advanced design concept for a piezoelectric energy harvesting (EH) device, multimodal EH skin structure, a thin and compact harvester which can generate power from multimodal vibration. Multimodal EH skin is an extended study of our previous works, EH skin, which is a new conceptual design for piezoelectric energy harvester by combining a vibrating skin structure and an additional thin piezoelectric layer into one embodiment. A computational (FE) model for the EH skin’s multilayers – a vibrating skin structure and a piezoelectric layer – is constructed and the optimal topology and shape of the piezoelectric layer is found for maximum power generation from multiple vibration modes. For finding topological distribution, the piezoelectric material is segmented along inflection lines from multiple vibration modes of interests in order to minimize voltage cancellation. A case study taken from an outdoor unit skin proves the excellent performance of multimodal EH skin by showing larger power generation rather than an EH skin without segmentation or a unimodal EH skin. The presented design concept can be easily applied to any engineering system with harmonic-vibrating skins.