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Procedia Engineering 87 (2014) 1529 1532

EUROSENSORS 2014, the XXVIII edition of the conference series

Ball-impact piezoelectric converter for multi-degree-of-freedom

energy harvesting from broadband low-frequency vibrations in
autonomous sensors
Davide Alghisi*, Simone Dalola, Marco Ferrari, Vittorio Ferrari
Department of Information Engineering, University of Brescia, Via Branze 38, 25123, Brescia, Italy

Abstract
This work proposes a piezoelectric converter for energy harvesting composed of a rigid ball enclosed among piezoelectric
diaphragms arranged in a three-dimensional geometry. When the structure is excited by mechanical vibrations, the ball
repeatedly bounces and hits one or more diaphragms, implementing the impact technique in a multi-degree-of-freedom
configuration. The converter was designed and built and a single-axis two-diaphragm version was characterized under sinusoidal
and random vibrations from 10 Hz to 100 Hz at different amplitude values up to 1.8 gRMS. The experimental results show that the
maximum RMS converted power provided by each diaphragm both with sinusoidal and random excitations is about 4 W. The
triaxial converter was tied to the ankle of a person and, in about one minute of walking at 4 km/h, 1 mJ of energy is extracted and
stored by a custom rectifier circuit into a 470-F capacitor.

TheAuthors.
Authors.Published
Published
Elsevier
2014
2014 The
byby
Elsevier
Ltd.Ltd.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
Peer-review
under responsibility of the scientific committee of Eurosensors 2014.
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of Eurosensors 2014
Keywords: Energy harvesting; piezoelectric converter; multi-degree-of-freedom converter; ball-impact; frequency-up technique.

1. Introduction
Piezoelectric energy converters are typically resonant devices that are most effective when excited at their
mechanical resonance. By reducing the dimensions, the resonant frequencies become generally higher than the
typical environmental mechanical vibrations (lower than hundreds of hertz) [1]. To make the converters effective for
broadband low-frequency vibrations, the exploitation of nonlinear frequency-up conversion mechanisms given by

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +39-030-3715938; fax: +39-030-380014.

E-mail address: d.alghisi001@unibs.it

1877-7058 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license

(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of Eurosensors 2014
doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2014.11.590

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Davide Alghisi et al. / Procedia Engineering 87 (2014) 1529 1532

the impact of driving elements, such as low-frequency resonator beams, with piezoelectric elements has been
reported [2-4]. In this work, compact ball-impact multi-Degree-of-Freedom (DoF) piezoelectric energy converters
are presented which exploit a driving ball free to bounce among piezoelectric diaphragms arranged in a
three-dimensional geometry. The use of a driving ball allows to contain the size of the converter while maintaining
the conversion effectiveness for low-frequency vibrations. The bouncing and impact of the driving ball with the
diaphragms occur also for rotations and small inclinations of the converters, allowing implementations not
achievable with impact solutions based on driving flexure elements [2].
14.4 mm

26 mm

TOP
piezoelectric
diaphragm

0.2 mm
8 mm

impact

BOTTOM
piezoelectric
diaphragm

Stainless
steel ball

Nickel tube

z
(a)

Front view

Input excitation

piezoelectric diaphragms

y
z

(b)

Input excitation
y Top view

(a)

ball
Input excitation

y Front view

z
y

(b)

Fig. 1: Cross section (a) and fabricated prototype (b) of the proposed Fig. 2: Schematic top and front views (a) and fabricated prototype (b)
of the proposed triaxial ball-impact piezoelectric energy converter (b).
and tested single-axis ball-impact piezoelectric energy converter.

2. Ball-impact piezoelectric converters

As a first step, the single-axis 3-cm3 ball-impact piezoelectric converter shown in Fig. 1 was fabricated and
tested. The 8-mm-diameter ball (stainless steel AISI 316) is free to move inside a tube and impacts a pair of
piezoelectric diaphragms (Murata 7BB-12-9) fixed at both ends of the tube.
To produce a further increase in the harvested energy, obtaining a multi-DoF response could be a possible
approach in many applications. For this reason, the triaxial 90-cm3 ball-impact piezoelectric energy converter shown
in Fig. 2 is proposed. Three pairs of piezoelectric diaphragms (Murata 7BB-27-4A0) surround the 30-mm-diameter
ball (stainless steel AISI 316) forming the six faces of a cube in order to harvest energy in the general case of
three-axis vibrations.
3. Experimental results
The experimental characterization of the single-axis ball-impact piezoelectric converter was obtained by
mounting the converter on a shaker held in a vertical position with the excitation axis normal to the diaphragm
surfaces.

Fig. 3: Open-circuit output voltages of the TOP and BOTTOM piezoelectric diaphragms respectively, excited by sinusoidal vibrations at 20 Hz
with 1.4-gRMS acceleration amplitude.

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Davide Alghisi et al. / Procedia Engineering 87 (2014) 1529 1532

Fig. 3 shows the typical open-circuit voltages provided by the TOP and BOTTOM piezoelectric diaphragms,
which present peak values related to the impact of the ball, and mechanical resonant frequencies of the diaphragms
above 10 kHz. The RMS power provided by the TOP diaphragms on a 10-k resistor and computed over a 1-s
window has been measured for two different excitation conditions.

TOP diaphragm

10

40
70
Frequency [Hz]

Number of impacts
Impact
=
rate [IR]
1s

1.3 gRMS
1.6 gRMS

100

(b)

150

IR =

excitation
frequency

100
50

Power [WRMS ]

Power [WRMS ]
(a)

5
4
3
2
1
0

1.2 gRMS
1.5 gRMS

Impact rate [Hz]

1.1 gRMS
1
1.4 gRMS
1

TOP diaphragm

3
2
y = 1.6522x
R = 0.4631

1
0

0
10

40
70
Frequency [Hz]

0.9

100

(c)

1.1 1.3 1.5 1.7

Acceleration [gRMS]

1.9

Fig. 4: RMS power provided on a 10-k resistor (a) and impact rate (b) of the TOP diaphragm of the single-axis ball-impact piezoelectric
converter excited by sinusoidal vibrations (10-100 Hz) and by 10-100 Hz band-pass filtered white-noise vibrations (c) with different amplitudes
of the RMS acceleration.

Under sinusoidal vibrations from 10 Hz to 100 Hz, the RMS converted power is proportional to the impact rate,
and shows a peak for excitations between 50 Hz and 60 Hz, as shown in Fig. 4a and Fig. 4b respectively. Under
10-100 Hz band-pass filtered white-noise vibrations, the converted RMS power has a linear trend with respect to the
RMS amplitude values of the acceleration, as shown in Fig. 4c.

Fig. 5: Positioning of the triaxial ball-impact piezoelectric converter tied to the ankle of a person (a). Voltages vgn (n = 1 6) provided on a 1-k
resistor by the piezoelectric diaphragms and measured by a data acquisition device (NI 6009) during a running session on the treadmill at 7 km/h (b).

The experimental results of the triaxial ball-impact piezoelectric converter were obtained by tying the converter
to the ankle of a person, as shown in Fig. 5a. The voltages vgn (n = 1 6) provided by the piezoelectric diaphragms
on a 1-k resistor were measured during a running session on the treadmill at 7 km/h and the typical trends are
shown in Fig. 5b. The highest voltage peaks provided by the piezoelectric diaphragms are synchronous with the heel
strike, while the others are due to the subsequent unpredictable bounces of the ball. The voltages vgn are rectified by
diode-based (1N4148) voltage doubler circuits parallel-like combined [5] to charge the single 470-F storage

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Davide Alghisi et al. / Procedia Engineering 87 (2014) 1529 1532

capacitor CS, as shown in Fig. 6a. The charging process of CS as a function of the walking time at a speed of 4 km/h
is shown in Fig. 6b. Only about one minute is required to store 1 mJ of energy ECS, which level is suitable to let a
low-power wireless sensor module operate for a few tens of milliseconds [6].

CS

vCS

ECS

vCS [V]

vg6

vg1

1
2
? CSv CS
2

0
0

Voltage doubler rectifiers

(a)

ECS [mJ]

Storage
capacitor

20

40

60
Time [s]

80

100

120

(b)

Fig. 6 Proposed rectifier circuit for the triaxial ball-impact piezoelectric converter (a): six parallel-like-combined diode-based (1N4148) voltage
doubler circuits rectify the AC voltages vgn (n = 1 6) and charge the 470-F storage capacitor CS. Voltage across the storage capacitor vCS and
the stored energy ECS during the charging process of CS with the converter tied to the ankle of a person walking at 4 km/h (b).

4. Conclusions
In this work single-axis and triaxial ball-impact multi-DoF piezoelectric energy converters for energy harvesting
from broadband low-frequency vibrations were presented. Unlike conventional converters, the impact technique is
herein implemented by using a driving ball instead of a low-frequency resonator beam, in order to reduce the size of
the converter while maintaining the conversion effectiveness for low-frequency vibrations. Furthermore, since the
triaxial converter is sensitive not only to vibrations but also to rotations and small inclinations, it is particularly
attractive for energy harvesting from human motion.
Experimental results show that both diaphragms of the single-axis piezoelectric converter provide up to 4 WRMS
on a 10-k resistor under white-noise vibrations up to 1.8 gRMS. The triaxial cube-shaped piezoelectric converter
was tied to the ankle of a person while running at 7 km/h, and up to 16 mWpeak provided by each diaphragm on a
1-k resistor were measured. By connecting the triaxial converter to a tailored rectifier circuit, during a walk at
4 km/h 1 mJ of energy is to stored into a 470-F capacitor in about one minute.
References
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harvester for low-frequency and wide-bandwidth operation, Sens. Actuator A-Phys., 208 (2014) 56-65.
[2] M. Ferrari, M. Ba, F. Cerini, V. Ferrari, Impact-enhanced multi-beam piezoelectric converter for energy harvesting in autonomous sensors,
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[3] L. Gu, C. Livermore, Compact passively self-tuning energy harvesting for rotating applications, Smart Mater. Struct., 21 (2012) 015002.
[4] G. Manla, N.M. White, J. Tudor, Harvesting energy from vehicle wheels, Proc.of Transducers 2009, (2009) 1389-1392.
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