Modeling and Improvement of a Cymbal Transducer in Energy Harvesting

This article analyzes the performance of a cymbal transducer in energy harvesting. A theoretical model is presented to determine the output power of the cymbal transducer for scavenging vibration energy. A maximum power of about 1.4 mW can be harvested across a 410 kΩ resistive load at 120 Hz under force of 8.15 N. It can be found that the results obtained from the theoretical model were in very good agreement with the experimental results. In order to improve the performance of the cymbal energy harvester, a new cymbal structure with a circumferential slot is presented to release the high-circumferential stresses, which could result in decreasing the energy transmission coefficient. The results show that the output power of the slotted-cymbal transducer while the depth of slot is 0.35 mm can reach about 2.5 mW at 120 Hz, which is approximately 0.8 times more than the original cymbal transducer.