Harvested power and sensitivity analysis of vibrating shoe-mounted piezoelectric cantilevers

This paper presents a preliminary investigation on energy harvesting from human walking via piezoelectric vibrating cantilevers. Heel accelerations during human gait are established by correlating data gathered from the literature with direct experimental measurements. All the observed relevant features are synthesized in a typical (standard) acceleration signal, used in subsequent numerical simulations. The transient electromechanical response and the harvested power of a shoe-mounted bimorph cantilever excited by the standard acceleration signal is computed by numerical simulations and compared with measurements on a real prototype. A sensitivity analysis is finally developed to estimate the mean harvested power for a wide range of scavenger configurations. Acceptability criteria based on imposed geometrical constraints and resistance strength limits (e.g. fatigue limit) are also established. This analysis allows a quick preliminary screening of harvesting performance of different scavenger configurations.