Experimental Performance Evaluation of Vibration Monitoring Sensor Prototype Driven by Piezocomposite Vibration Energy Harvester Under Low Intensity Excitation Condition

In this study, we have developed a sensor prototype for vibration acceleration monitoring driven by the authors’ proposed vibration energy harvester. It uses a commercial LTC3588 energy harvesting chip with capacitors and the piezo-bimorph cantilever-type energy harvester consists of the surface bonded two Macro-Fiber Composites. The power consumption of the acceleration sensor was typically 1mW, and the driving current was typically 400 microamperes. For vibration condition monitoring applications of industrial rotating machinery, we assumed that the typical casing or pedestal vibration amplitude of the rotating machinery was 0.71 mm/sec rms according to ISO standard. This low intensity excitation condition was the input for experimental evaluation of the developed sensor prototype. The sensor prototype was able to measure the vibration acceleration of approximately 17 seconds under the vibration input of 0.013G (RMS) at approximately 56Hz every two minutes. Approximately 12% of the input of vibration energy was used for driving the acceleration sensor. Therefore, estimated overall energy transfer efficiency was about 12%. The experimental results indicate the feasibility of the sensor prototype driven by piezocomposite vibration energy harvester.