Sensitivity Analysis of Power Output from Piezoelectric Vibration Constant-Voltage Generator using VBSA and PAWN Method

Based on the power required for nodes in wireless sensor networks and numerous issues in power resource changing in these nodes, this is essential to have nodes that can harvest their energy themselves. There are many sensors in helicopters and airplanes to record data from different parts of the system so that supply the power required by these sensor network nodes by the available mechanical vibration can be an alternative for batteries. In this paper, a piezoelectric harvester is designed to support the amount of electrical power needed for wireless nodes. In order to optimize the design, sensitivity analysis of the power output from the piezoelectric beam in constant voltage is presented. Due to the necessity of providing the amount of power for wireless nodes in constant voltage and the effects of uncertainties on the power output, two sensitivity analysis methods, the sensitivity factors of geometry parameters such as length, width, thickness of substrate and piezoelectric layers on the power as objective function are assessed by two methods, VBSA and PAWN, and the both results are compared. The comparing results demonstrate that the designed harvester can provide the required power for nodes in constant voltage and the length of substrate and piezoelectric have significant improvement on the output power, while the thickness of the sublayer has a minor effect.