Research on the master–slave compound multi-cantilever piezoelectric energy harvester

The structure of single cantilever energy harvester has been detailed descripted and analized. With more emphases on the frequency of the single cantilever energy harvester, amplitude-frequency and phase-frequency characteristics has been studied. For adjust the frequency to the ambitent environment, an array of multi-cantilever structure is introduced to discuss. By finite element analysis, the array can expand the response of the energy harvester which satisfies the environment request. But for every cantilever, the frequency characteristics present also a single peak characteristics. So the efficiency of array of multi-cantilever structure is very limited. The master–slave multi-cantilever structure can achieve a double peaks even multi peaks characteristic response. The output voltage exceed 0.1 V that surpass the array of multi-cantilever structure. It not only expands the frequency response range of the energy harvester, but also makes the frequency response of the energy harvester change from one peak to two peaks which broad the band greatly. Furthermore, the frequency of master–slave multi-cantilever structure is obviously lower than array multi-cantilever’s. Test and measurement has proved the multi peaks characteristic response.