Bio-inspired Bistable Piezoelectric Energy Harvester for Powering Animal Telemetry Tags: Concept Design and Preliminary Experimental Validation

Conference · Wed Sep 01 00:00:00 EDT 2021

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2582609· OSTI ID:1869788

Qian, Feng ^[1]; Liu, Mingyi ^[1]; Huang, Jianuo ^[1]; Zhang, Jiajun ^[1]; Jung, Hyunjun ^[2]; Deng, Zhiqun  ^[2]; Hajj, Muhammad ^[3]; Zuo, Lei ^[1]

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1. Virginia Tech
2. BATTELLE (PACIFIC NW LAB)
3. Stevens Institute Of Technology

This paper presents the concept 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 concept 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 bistable 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 could effectively converter fish swing motions into electricity. 17.25 mJ energy was obtained within 130 s under the peak-to-peak swing angle of 30o at 1.5 Hz in the capacitor charging experiments.

• Research Organization: Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-76RL01830
• OSTI ID: 1869788
• Report Number(s): PNNL-SA-162216
• Resource Relation: Conference: Active and Passive Smart Structures and Integrated Systems XV. March 22-27, 2021. Online. Proceedings of the SPIE
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English