IO N The harvesting of energy from the environment dates back to the age of the windmill and the waterwheel. Their modern counterparts are hydro-power plants, wind farms, solar farms, and more recently, novel piezoelectric devices [ 1 ] for power generation from mechanical vibration. [ 2 ] Fully utilizing power sources such as light, [ 3–5 ] thermal, and mechanical energy is of great importance...

A numerical method called Multiple Attribute Decision Making (MADM) has been used for rational selection of a cotton harvester out of a finite number of cotton harvesters available the world over. In India, efforts are being made to design and develop a commercial cotton harvester to harvest selected cotton varieties sown by adopting common agronomic practices locally for cotton cultivation. Th...

This paper describes an approach to harvest electrical energy from a mechanically excited piezoelectric element. The structure of piezoelectric energy harvester is optimized for maximum power with minimum dimensions through Genetic Algorithm approach to enhance the conversion of mechanical energy into electrical energy using direct piezoelectric effect. Numerical analysis is carried out to obta...

This paper presents a low-profile, planar electromagnetic vibration energy harvester integrated with a Halbach array. Halbach array is a special arrangement of permanent magnets that doubles the magnetic field on one side of the array while cancelling the field to near zero on the other side. Using this arrangement can improve electromagnetic coupling in a limited space. The energy harvester ha...

This paper presents design, multiphysics finite element modeling and experimental validation of a new miniaturized PZT generator that integrates a bulk piezoelectric ceramic onto a flexible platform for energy harvesting from the human body pressing force. In spite of its flexibility, the mechanical structure of the proposed device is simple to fabricate and efficient for the energy conversion....

The results of these studies showed that mechanical loader and combine harvester performance varied considerably depending on the type of machine, cane yield, and crop and field conditions. Instantaneous loading rates and mechanical harvesting pour rates varied between 60 and 100 tons per hour. Infield cane losses were significantly lower where the cane was manually cut and mechanically loaded ...

Wearable medical and electronic devices demand a similarly wearable electrical power supply. Humanbased piezoelectric energy harvesters may be the solution, but the mismatch between the typical frequencies of human activities and the optimal operating frequencies of piezoelectric generators calls for the implementation of a frequency up-conversion technique. A rotary piezoelectric energy harves...

Numerical and experimental investigations of broadband random vibrational energy harvesting using monostable and bistable piezoelectric cantilevers are presented along with relative performance comparisons. Simulations and experiments reveal that a linear-monostable energy harvester can outperform its bistable counterpart for very low and relatively high random excitation levels. The bistable c...