Development of fitness system for human energy harvesting
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Date
2019-06
Authors
Kho, Chow Wui
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Abstract
As technology advances and the invention of electronic devices increasing throughout the year, the demand in energy will not stop to increase and energy harvesting became one of the hot topics in the past few years. The idea of harvesting energy from human body motion becoming more favored due to its reliability and environmentally friendly energy sources. In this study, an energy harvester which based on the force exerted from human footstep is proposed. Piezoelectric material is used to convert the kinetic energy from the human footstep to useable electrical energy. Before this energy is able to be used, rectification process is required due to the output current of the piezoelectric material is an alternating current. The voltage regulator also needed to regulate the voltage suitable for low power devices. The addition of buck converter circuit is to increase current and improve the outcome in the overall power conditioning part. In this part of the study, the effect of different parameters and configuration piezoelectric material on the generation of electrical energy is investigated. The external factor such as human body weight, gender, walking speed and surrounding temperature also included in the investigation to determine its effect on the piezoelectric material. At the end of this research, the parameter of the piezoelectric material is decided based on its performance and durability. Series-parallel circuit arrangement was selected due to its higher output. Temperature below around 40°C is consider optimum temperature for operation of PZT piezoelectric material. Lastly, the results from performance testing of prototype concluded that human male with heavier body weight can increase the electrical energy generation with fast walking speed.