Bio-inspired bistable piezoelectric energy harvester for powering animal telemetry tags: Conceptual design and preliminary experimental validation

Feng Qian, Mingyi Liu, Jianuo Huang, Jiajun Zhang, Hyunjun Jung, Zhiqun Daniel Deng, Muhammad R. Hajj and Lei Zuo

Renewable Energy, 2022, vol. 187, issue C, 34-43

Abstract: This paper presents the conceptual design, preliminary experimental validation, and performance evaluation of a novel bio-inspired bi-stable piezoelectric energy harvester for self-powered animal telemetry tags. The overall conceptual design, which includes a bio-inspired attachment and a bi-stable piezoelectric energy harvester, is introduced firstly with a specific application example of marine fish tracking. The self-powered telemetry tag can be externally deployed on fish (dorsal fin) to monitor fish habitats, population, and underwater environment. Inspired by the Venus flytrap's rapid shape transition, a bi-stable piezoelectric energy harvester is developed to scavenge energy from fish maneuvering and the surrounding fluid flow for a sustainable power supply. The bistability of the harvester is characterized by the measured force-displacement curve and double potential wells. A bluff body is integrated to the free end of the bistable piezoelectric energy harvester to enhance the structure-fluid interaction for the large-amplitude snap-through vibrations and higher voltage output. Controlled laboratory experiments are conducted in a water tank on the bio-inspired bi-stable piezoelectric energy harvester using a servo motor system to simulate fish swing motion at various conditions to evaluate the power generation performance. The preliminary underwater experimental results demonstrated that the proposed bio-inspired bi-stable piezoelectric energy harvester could effectively convert fish swing motions into electricity. The device collected 17.25 mJ of energy over 130 s under a peak-to-peak swing angle of 30o at 1.5 Hz in the capacitor charging experiments.

Keywords: Piezoelectric; Energy harvesting; Bio-inspired; Bistable vibration; Telemetry tag; Animal tracking (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:187:y:2022:i:c:p:34-43

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2022.01.018

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