Virtual instrument to obtain electrical models of piezoelectric elements used in energy harvesting

Abstract

A new virtual instrument (VI) has been designed to obtain the Fourier model of piezoelectric devices under test (PDUT) in road traffic environments, and the linear electrical model of the piezoelectric harvester circuit involved in energy harvesting applications. The VI provides a high grade of automatisation and high accuracy in the characterisation procedure of a piezoelectric harvesting system. The maximum power can be predicted and the number of piezoelectric elements can be calculated to achieve a given power value. The VI system controls the test bench (patent protected), which simulates the effect of the road traffic, and obtains the Fourier model of the PDUT. The VI controls the switched circuit's matrix of the harvesting electronic hardware (HEH) to select the PDUTs and the rectifier topology. The VI also connects capacitors and load resistors of the HEH and computes the key parameters of the piezoelectric harvester model.