Vibration energy harvesting by Yu Jia and Ashwin Seshia
The technology
CSIC’s innovative vibration energy harvesting (VEH) and low-power sensing technologies enable a new approach to distributed autonomous structural health monitoring.
The VEH technologies complement or replace existing battery solutions, providing enabling technology for long-term condition monitoring of assets in a range of remote and/or inaccessible locations.
Vibration energy harvesting can potentially provide a convenient, self-sustaining on-board power solution to complement emerging wireless sensor technologies – the smarter power backbone to the ever-growing wireless infrastructure.
Applications
These devices address a number of applications for wireless sensors in structural health monitoring, industrial process control and environmental monitoring. The team is currently engaged in integrating the harvesters with a variety of wireless sensor modules for monitoring transport-related infrastructure such as bridges and rail track. A significant deployment is planned for the Forth Road Bridge in Scotland later this year.
Impact and benefits
• fully packaged macro-scale vibration energy harvesters based on the principle of parametric resonance have undergone successful laboratory tests demonstrating peak power output of greater than 100mW. Ongoing work is addressing integration with wireless sensors and preliminary field trials with Industry Partners
• MEMS-scale harvesters have been developed with peak power output of up to 20mW with a design pathway outlined towards achieving peak output power of greater than 100mW
• MEMS-scale harvesters have been utilised to successfully power interface circuits for a MEMS strain gauge enabling the possibility of self-powered sensors and ‘event-triggered’ operations for wireless motes
• patents underlying this technology have been filed through Cambridge Enterprise and a spin-out company, 8Power, is being formed to commercialise the technology
• the team has been awarded a new Innovate UK project to develop the MEMS-scale vibration energy harvesting technology