Thermal network modelling of hybrid piezo-pyro transducer for application in energy harvesting

International audience"In the current era, due to global climate change, a lot of emphasis has now shifted towards energy harvestingand making our devices more efficient. In automobile industry, a lot of research is going on in the field of electric vehicles, eventhe conventional vehicles efficiency has also been greatly increased in the past decade. Today, a lot of automation in thevehicle is incorporated in order to reduce human errors while driving. With increase in number of sensors in a vehicle itsenergy consumption has increased. In order to maintain a vehicle’s energy efficiency, self-powered sensors are aninteresting field to explore, which works on energy harvesting by various means. In this report, we present an optimizeddesign of cantilevers fabricated over a block of thermally conductive pyroelectric block. Further, to do the modelling ofthe design we used thermal network modelling. It aims to validate a model of transducer for converting vibrational andthermal energy into electrical energy, for the application of energy harvesting in sensors for automobiles. This approachcombines the pyroelectric, piezoelectric and thermal conductive properties of different material to enhanceefficiency of the transducer hence, power output. In order to calculate theoretical efficiency more precisely, we propose thethermal network modelling.