WHETRICITY

Energy harvesting or the process of acquiring energy from the surrounding environment has been a persistent human endeavor throughout history, e.g. the use of watermills in ancient Greece, and sailboats by Phoenicians and Egyptians, circa 4000 B.C. These days there is an increasing interest in harvesting energy at much smaller scales for use in embedded systems. For these applications the power requirements are of a very small scale, e.g. less than 100 mW.

The project deals with the production and storing of electrical energy from the wheels of the vehicles.The project idea is working whether the vehicle is in the rest state or at the running state.The harvesting of the electrical energy from this technique is carried out by the cantiliver technology which is the placing of the piezoelectric materials between the wheel and the rim of the vehicle and the followed storing of the electrical energy on a rechargable battery. These days there is an increasing interest to harvest energy at a much smaller scale, i.e. energy scavenging. For applications such as the ones found in many embedded systems the power requirements are often small (less than 100 mW). Piezoelectric materials are great candidates for energy scavenging using vibrations from the surrounding environment, e.g. vibrations generated by the traffic through bridges, or the motions of people as they walk. Piezoelectric materials become electrically polarized when subjected to mechanical strain and the degree of polarization is proportional to the applied strain.


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