A Rapid Modeling and Prototyping Technique for Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting Systems

The paper describes a reliable modeling technique for piezoelectric transducers and a procedure for identifying model parameters with few simple measurements and standard laboratory equipment. Direct measurements were taken on commercial Q220-A4-303YB piezoelectric transducers from Piezo Systems in a cantilever configuration with tip masses between 6 g and 18 g. For validation purposes, the behavior of the equivalent electromechanical circuits was simulated and compared to direct observations in real operating conditions. The model showed to predict with a high degree of accuracy both the response of the transducers to vibrations and a set of second order effects associated to the presence of a non-linear power converter and usually ignored by conventional models presented in literature.