Research on energy harvesting performance of an arch energy harvester

There exists enormous mechanical energy in roads. In this paper, an arch energy harvester was studied with the methods of finite element analysis and experimental testing to transfer the mechanical energy into electrical energy. We mainly researched the static characteristics of the energy harvester and the impacts of external force, vibration frequency, and resistive load on energy harvesting performance. The results demonstrate that the maximum deformation appeared at the contacting edge area of the metal cap and piezoelectric material. An arch energy harvester can generate about 61mW of output power with a 10N of force and at 15Hz of frequency across an optimal matching resistive load of 100KΩ.