Energy-Harvesting Performances of Two Tandem Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters with Cylinders in Water

This paper presents a new energy-harvesting system with two identical piezoelectric energy harvesters in a tandem configuration. Each harvester consists of a piezoelectric beam and a circular cylinder. Experiments are performed to investigate the energy-harvesting performances of this system in water. It can be found that their energy-harvesting performances are all different from that of the single harvester (without an upstream or downstream harvester). The experimental results show that the water speed and the spacing ratio have significant effects on the energy-harvesting performances of the two tandem harvesters. The output power of the upstream harvester first increases, and then decreases with the water speed increasing. The maximum output power of 167.8 μW is achieved at the water speed of 0.306 m/s and the spacing ratio (L/D) of 2.5. Increasing the water speed results in an increase in the energy performance of the downstream harvester. Compared with the single harvester, the performance of the downstream harvester is weakened in the low water speed range, but enhanced in the higher water speed range. Further, the output power of 533 μW is obtained by the downstream harvester at the water speed of 0.412 m/s and the spacing ratio of 1.7, which is 29 times more than that of the single harvester. The results indicate the superiority of the two tandem harvesters in energy-harvesting performance.