Vibration harvesting has been intensively developed recently and systems have been simulated and realized, but real-life situations (including aircraft Structure Health Monitoring (SHM)involve uneven, low amplitude, low frequency vibrations. In such an unfavorable case, it is very likely that no power can be harvested for a long time. To overcome this, multi-source harvesting is a relevant solution, and in our application both solar and thermal gradient sources are available. We propose in this paper a complete Microsystem including a piezoelectric vibration harvesting module, thermoelectric conversion module, signal processing electronics and supercapacitor. A model is proposed for these elements and a VHDL-AMS simulation of the whole system is presented, showing that the vibration harvesting device alone cannot supply properly a SHM wireless node. Its role is nevertheless important since it is a more reliable source than thermoelectric (which depends on climatic conditions). Moreover, synergies between vibration harvesting and thermoelectric scavenging circuits are presented.

Date Published: 30 December 2008
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 7268, Smart Structures, Devices, and Systems IV, 726810 (30 December 2008); doi: 10.1117/12.810927

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7268:
Smart Structures, Devices, and Systems IV
Said Fares Al-Sarawi; Vijay K. Varadan; Neil Weste; Kourosh Kalantar-Zadeh, Editor(s)