engleski

Piezoelectric eels for powering pollution monitoring wireless sensor networks in watercourses

Continuous monitoring of pollutants in watercourses requires an uninterrupted sensors’ power supply. In the case of large networks, when sensor nodes can be placed in hardly accessible locations, energy harvesting can provide a feasible solution to assure power autonomy. The possibility to use a harvesting concept known as the piezoelectric eel is studied in this work. A custom code that implements the penalty immersed boundary method is developed and used to simulate eel’s motion. Based on the results of the calculations, eel’s design, consisting of a structural support covered with active piezoelectric polymer layers, is finalised. The respective power conditioning electronics is also been designed and prototyped. The obtained experimental results are finally given.

Pollution monitoring ; wireless autonomous sensor networks ; energy harvesting ; piezoelectric eel ; PVDF

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