DefinePK

Abstract

The development of smart materials have promoted a rapid increase of interest in ambient energy harvesting. Piezoelectric material is one of the common smart materials utilized for harvesting vibration energy. This paper presents an experimental study of a rain energy harvester using a piezoelectric beam tested under different rain conditions. A spray-type rain simulator is developed to simulate actual rain by using three nozzles. The rain simulator is able to generate rain with different rain intensities and drop size distributions (DSD) to simulate different raining conditions. Experiment results show that a total energy of 38.89 µJ, 52.05 µJ, and 114.68 µJ are harvested when tested under light, moderate, and heavy rain respectively for a period of five minutes.