A piezoelectric energy harvester consists of a spiral-shaped piezoelectric bimorph to transfer mechanical energy into electric energy, an electrochemical battery to store the scavenged electric energy, and a rectifier together with a step-down dc-dc converter to connect the two components as an integrated system. A spiral-shaped harvesting structure is studied in this paper because it is very useful in the microminiaturization of advanced sensing technology. The aim of employing a step-down dc-dc converter in the storage circuit is to match the optimal output voltage of the piezoelectric bimorph with the battery voltage for efficient charging. In order to raise the output power density of a harvesting element, moreover, we apply a synchronized switch harvesting on inductor (SSHI) in parallel with the piezoelectric bimorph to artificially extend the closed-circuit interval of the rectifier. Numerical results show that the introduction of a dc-dc converter in the storage circuit or a SSHI in the harvesting structure can raise the charging efficiency several times higher than a harvester without a dc-dc converter or an SSHI

In this study, the distributed temperature and strain sensing with an annealed single mode gold-coated optical fiber over a wide temperature range up to 1000 °C is demonstrated by using the differential pulse pair (DPP) Brillouin optical time domain analysis (BOTDA). Owing to the protection provided by the gold coating, the fiber can withstand high temperature environments and maintain a high strength, which enables the gold-coated fiber acting as a repeatable high-temperature sensor. After annealing twice to remove the internal stress, the temperature coefficient of the gold-coated fiber is stable and consistent with a nonlinear function. Owing to the residual stress accumulated during the cooling process of coating and the low yield strength of gold, a pre-pulling test is essential to measure the strain of a gold-coated fiber. An equal axial force model is used to recalculate the strain distribution induced by the large temperature difference within the furnace. The high-temperature strain coefficient of an annealed gold-coated fiber decreases with temperature, i.e. from ~0.046 MHz/με at 100 °C to ~0.022 MHz/με at 1000 °C, mainly due to the increase in Young’s modulus of silica with temperature. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that an annealed gold-coated fiber has been applied for distributed high-temperature strain sensing, which demonstrates the potential applications for strain monitoring in complex, high-temperature devices such as jet engines or turbines.

This article proposes a new piezoelectric structure for energy harvesting from flow-induced vibrations. It consists of a properly poled and electroded flexible ceramic cylinder. When it is in a flow perpendicular to its axis, the flow exerts a transverse force on the cylinder due to asymmetric vortex shedding, which drives the cylinder into flexural vibrations with an electrical output. A one-dimensional model is derived for the motion of the cylinder, which allows an analytical solution from which the basic behaviors of the energy harvester are calculated and examined. For a cylinder of 40 cm in length and $1$ cm in diameter in flowing air with a speed of 5 m/s, the output power is of the order of ${10}^{-3}\text{W}$ . It becomes significantly higher if the flow speed is increased.

A silicon-based cross-like holey phononic crystal (PnC) strip is proposed for the control of elastic waves in the field of micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS). The goal is to obtain a broad bandgap at low frequencies with a lightweight structure. In this respect, the effects of varying the in-plane and the out-of-plane geometry parameters are discussed. After design, a gap-to-midgap ratio of 47% is obtained with an intermediate filling fraction of the solid material and a small thickness of the strip. The band gap can be moved to an extremely low frequency range while keeping the strip significantly smaller than previously reported PnC strips. The transmission property through a finite number of periods agrees well with the band structure of the infinite system. The proposed PnC strip could, for instance, be used as an isolating anchor for elastic wave resonators in MEMS.