Energy Harvesting on Airport Runway Using Piezoelectric Devices

Abstract—Exploiting ambient sources of vibration energy has become an emerging trend in the field of energy harvesting. There are several methods by which this can be achieved, out of which piezoelectricity has emerged as one of the efficient methods. For effective application of piezoelectric devices to harvest energy, it is important to recognise the sources or areas from where a large amount of vibration energy can be exploited. In this paper we present a multimorph piezoelectric device that would be employed to harvest vibrational energy from airport run-­‐ ways. We have explored the economic impact of our proposal by hypothetically employing our system on Heathrow Airport, London. Primarily the paper focuses on material selection, basicmechanical design and the economic impact of the piezoelectric harvester. KEYWORDS:Piezoelectric, Polyvinylidene fluoride, Quartz crystal, Lead zirconate titanate (PZT),M31 bacteriophage