Applied Energy 331 (2023) 120355

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Applied Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apenergy

Analysis and experiment of auxetic centrifugal softening impact energy

harvesting from ultra-low-frequency rotational excitations
Shitong Fang a , Keyu Chen b ,∗, Zhihui Lai a , Shengxi Zhou c , Wei-Hsin Liao b ,∗
a
College of Mechatronics and Control Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, PR China
b
Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N. T., Hong Kong, China
c
School of Aeronautics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, 710072, China

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: The ubiquitous ultra-low-frequency rotational motions have become a kind of potential source for energy
Energy harvesting harvesting. Despite this, achieving high energy output at ultra-low rotational frequencies via simple energy
Ultra-low-frequency rotations harvesting structures appears to be a significant challenge. Therefore, this paper proposes an auxetic centrifugal
Centrifugal effect
softening impact energy harvester (ASIEH) to break through this bottleneck. The ASIEH consists of a centrifugal
Impact frequency up-conversion
softening driving beam that impacts two rigid auxetic piezoelectric beams to generate electric energy during
Auxetic structure
rotation. The modeling and simulation of the ASIEH and the plain centrifugal softening impact energy harvester
(PSIEH) indicate that the high stress distribution and the simultaneous operation of 𝑑31 and 𝑑32 modes of
the auxetic energy harvester can improve the energy output. Under the centrifugal effect, the driving beam
experiences the vibration, impact and trapping modes subsequently, among which the impact mode produces
the highest energy output. Experiments are conducted to validate the model and show that the peak power
of the ASIEH (0.673 mW) can be increased by 200.45% compared with that of the PSIEH (0.224 mW) at
3.5 Hz. Parametric studies indicate that no matter how the impact distance and rotational radius are varied,
the peak power and bandwidth of the ASIEH are higher than those of the PSIEH. Owing to the combination
of both the centrifugal effect and the auxetic structure, the proposed ASIEH exhibits the great potential in
ultra-low-frequency rotational energy harvesting with both high power density (41.23 μW/g) and high output
power.

1. Introduction
The rapid development of Internet of Things [1] leads to the widely
distributed wireless sensor network, which plays an important role
in the machine condition monitoring [2,3], environmental monitor-
ing [4], etc. Batteries, as the current main power supply for wireless
sensors, have the disadvantages of short endurance and life time, and
therefore need to be frequently recharged or replaced. This brings
the great inconvenience especially for the remote or implanted wire-
less sensors [5]. Therefore, researchers have proposed to directly har-
vest the mechanical energy from the working environment of wireless
sensors so as to achieve their self-powered ability [6–14].
In the field of mechanical energy harvesting, rotational energy
harvesting has received great attention [15–22] due to the abundant
rotational energy resources in our life. Compared with the large-scale
generators such as wind turbine and water turbine, the small-scale
rotational energy harvesters based on piezoelectric [23], electromag-
netic [24], electrostatic [25] and triboelectric [26] mechanisms can
reduce the integration and packaging cost with wireless sensors. How-
ever, the widely distributed rotational excitations in practice have
time-varying and ultra-low rotational frequencies (< 5 Hz), such as
wind turbine blade rotating [27–31], arm or leg swinging [32–34]
and ocean wave heaving [35–37]. In these applications, the output
power and bandwidth of small-scale linear energy harvesters are re-
spectively low and narrow due to their high natural frequencies and
resonance-based characteristics [38].
In order to overcome the disadvantages of linear harvesters and
improve the ultra-low-frequency performance, researchers have pro-
posed the frequency up-conversion techniques including mechanical
or magnetic plucking [39,40], impact [15,41,42] and contact [43]
mechanisms. Hou et al. [37] proposed a contact-based electromagnetic–
triboelectric rotational energy harvester, which is constituted by a
pendulum, triboelectric blades, coils and magnets, and demonstrated
its power density of 75.5 W/m2 at 2 Hz. Cai and Zhu [44] proposed
a double-mass pendulum wave energy harvester with electromagnetic

∗ Corresponding authors.
E-mail addresses: kychen@link.cuhk.edu.hk (K. Chen), whliao@cuhk.edu.hk (W.-H. Liao).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2022.120355
Received 31 May 2022; Received in revised form 11 October 2022; Accepted 14 November 2022
Available online 28 November 2022
0306-2619/© 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
S. Fang et al.
mechanism, and demonstrated that it has the ultra-low-frequency band-
width between 0.2 and 1.4 Hz. Fan et al. [45] designed a pendulum-
plucked rotational energy harvester that consists of a pendulum with
tuned mass and inclined plectrum, a rotor with sawteeth outer surface,
coils and magnets. Experimental results showed that it has the output
power in milliwatt level between 2.5 and 4.0 Hz. Cai and Liao [46]
presented a plucking electromagnetic energy harvester with a rotor that
has magnets and a proof mass as well as a stator with fixed magnets,
coils, supporter and base, and achieved the maximum output power of
151 μW between 0.7 and 1.3 Hz. Li et al. [47] designed a triboelectric–
electromagnetic hybrid rotational energy harvester constituted by a
rotor with flywheel, magnet and pipeline, a stator, a shell and wind
scoops for the rotational energy harvesting (< 3.6 Hz). The above works
facilitate the development of ultra-low-frequency rotational energy
harvesting through the novel but relatively complex harvester designs.
In recent years, researchers have found that the effective utilization
of centrifugal effect can improve the output power at low (< 15 Hz) and
even ultra-low (< 5 Hz) rotational frequencies on the premise of rel-
atively simple energy harvesting structures. Most researches achieved
this by utilizing the centrifugal effect to reduce the resonant frequencies
of harvesters. Guan and Liao [48] firstly proposed a radially inverted
rotational piezoelectric beam with centrifugal softening effect and ex-
perimentally validated its output power of 83.5–825 μW between 7 and
13.5 Hz. Zou et al. [49] proposed two magnetically coupled inverted
rotational piezoelectric beams, and experimentally demonstrated their
total output power of 564 μW at 7 Hz with approximately 0.8 Hz
bandwidth. Later, the centrifugal effect was investigated for the ultra-
low-frequency rotational energy harvesting. Mei et al. [50] presented
a centrifugal softening piezoelectric energy harvester and experimen-
tally demonstrated its average output power of 50 μW between 1
and 2 Hz. To further improve the frequency bandwidth, researchers
have proposed to incorporate the centrifugal softening and impact
mechanisms for rotational energy harvesting. Rui et al. [51] proposed a
three-beam impact piezoelectric energy harvester with the centrifugal
softening effect, which could produce 52.1 μW at 4.2 Hz with 1.9 Hz
bandwidth. Fang et al. [52] incorporated the centrifugal effect and
the impact mechanism to improve the low-frequency energy output.
However, subject to the relatively simple structure and the energy loss,
the output power of the existing ultra-low-frequency rotational energy
harvesters with centrifugal effect is restricted in the level of several to
dozens of microwatts, which still needs to be improved.
Therefore, this paper proposes an auxetic centrifugal softening im-
pact energy harvester (ASIEH). With the combination of the centrifugal
softening effect and the auxetic structure, the proposed harvester can
achieve the high energy output at ultra-low-frequency rotational ex-
citations with the relatively simple structure. Due to their negative
Poisson’s ratio, the auxetic piezoelectric beams (APBs) have been ex-
ploited in improving the vibration energy harvesting performance in
recent years [53–58]. However, the investigation of auxetic structures
in breaking through the energy harvesting performance at ultra-low-
frequency rotations is still an open issue. This, in fact, can be achieved
in the premise that the number of structural elements is not increased.
This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces the design
of our proposed harvester and the corresponding mathematical mod-
eling. Furthermore, the displacement and stress distribution, resonant
frequency and system dynamics analyses are performed. Section 3
shows the model parameter identification, impedance matching exper-
iments as well as the experimental validation. Section 4 gives the key
conclusions.
2. Design, modeling and simulation
2.1. Design
The schematic diagram of the proposed ASIEH is shown in Fig. 1(a).
It can be observed that there are an inverted driving beam with tip
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Applied Energy 331 (2023) 120355
mass and two relatively rigid and identical APBs (APB-I and APB-
II) that are symmetrically placed along the radius. Since the rota-
tional axis is parallel to the gravitational field, during the rotation,
the gravity will excite the beams to vibrate periodically. Specifically,
with much lower structural stiffness, the inverted driving beam has
higher vibration amplitude, which therefore periodically impacts and
releases two rigid APBs to vibrate at their high natural frequencies
for the energy generation. The reason why such impact mechanism is
adopted is to convert the low-frequency environmental excitation to
the high-frequency vibration of the generators, which is the so-called
frequency-up conversion technique.
Fig. 1(b) shows the detailed exploded view of APB. The piezoelectric
buzzer is composed of a brass film and a lead zirconate titanate (PZT-
5 A) layer, which is connected to cantilever beam substrate made of
polylactic acid with auxetic structure through the epoxy layer. Note
that the epoxy layer has the same pattern as that of the auxetic struc-
ture. When a uniaxial pressure is acted on the longitudinal direction
(1-axis) of the auxetic structure, it will laterally contracts (2-axis)
as shown in Fig. 2 instead of expanding like the conventional plain
structure without the auxetic pattern and vice versa. Such character-
istic is due to the well-known negative Poisson’s ratio. By considering
the proposed harvester with the rigid plain piezoelectric beam (PPB,
as shown in Fig. 1(c)) as PSIEH, this paper aims to investigate the
dynamics and output power of ASIEH and PSIEH.
2.2. Modeling and simulation
2.2.1. Auxetic piezoelectric beam
The advantages of adopting auxetic structure in the piezoelectric
beam substrate can be classified as two aspects. On one hand, the aux-
etic structure has high stress and strain close to geometric corners and
singularities, leading to the increase of power density of the harvester.
On the other hand, the increased stress values in the auxetic structure
possess the same sign in both longitudinal and lateral directions due to
the negative Poisson’s ratio. Therefore, the high stress distribution and
the simultaneous operation of 𝑑31 and 𝑑32 modes lead to the improved
performance of the auxetic energy harvester.
For the first advantage as mentioned above, the 3D constitutive
relation of the piezoelectric harvesting material can be written as [59]:
E
𝑇𝑖𝑗 = 𝑐𝑖𝑗𝑘𝑙 𝑆𝑘𝑙 − 𝑒𝑘𝑖𝑗 𝐸𝑘
(1)
𝐷𝑖 = 𝑒𝑖𝑘𝑙 𝑆𝑘𝑙 + 𝜀S𝑖𝑘 𝐸𝑘 , (𝑖, 𝑗, 𝑘, 𝑙 = 1, 2, 3)
where 𝑇𝑖𝑗 and 𝑆𝑘𝑙 denote the mechanical stress and strain fields, respec-
tively. 𝐸𝑘 and 𝐷𝑖 denote the electric field and electrical displacement
E , 𝑒
field, respectively. 𝑐𝑖𝑗𝑘𝑙 S
𝑖𝑘𝑙 and 𝜀𝑖𝑘 are the elastic stiffness, piezoelec-
tric and permittivity constants, respectively. Therefore, increasing the
values of 𝑇𝑖𝑗 and 𝑆𝑘𝑙 can increase the electrical displacement 𝐷𝑖 , which
explains the reason for the improvement of power density.
For the second advantage as mentioned above, it can be explained
through the following relation between the output power and the stress
of the piezoelectric beam by considering that it works in the bending
mode [60]:
( )2
𝑃 ∝ 𝜎 11 + 𝜎 22 (2)
where 𝜎 11 and 𝜎 22 are the average stress components along the lon-
gitudinal and lateral directions, respectively. The piezoelectric beam
with auxetic structure has 𝜎 11 and 𝜎 22 with the same sign, which both
can contribute to the output power through the piezoelectric constants
𝑑31 and 𝑑32 (𝑑31 = 𝑑32 ). Compared with this, for a conventional PPB
with the positive Poisson’s ratio, its 𝜎 22 has the negative sign to that
of 𝜎 11 , leading to a decrease of the total output power. This indicates
the improved energy harvesting performance of APBs compared with
PPBs.
In order to intuitively illustrate the advantages of adopting the aux-
etic structure, the simulation through finite element method (FEM) of
S. Fang et al.
Fig. 1. (a) Schematic of the proposed ASIEH with the rotational axis parallel with the earth surface. Exploded view of the (b) APB and (c) PPB.
Fig. 2. (a) Undeformed and (b) deformed shapes of the auxetic structure.
APB and PPB is performed in COMSOL. The relevant material and struc-
tural parameters in simulation are given in Table 1. It can be observed
that the overall dimensions of APB and PPB, including the length, width
and thickness of beam substrates and piezoelectric buzzers, are set to be
the same to ensure their fair comparison except for the auxetic pattern
and corresponding epoxy layers. The detailed dimension of the auxetic
structure has been shown in Fig. 2(a). For the APB, the piezoelectric and
epoxy layers are assumed to completely cover the auxetic structures.
For both beams, all elements are assumed to be bonded perfectly.
Note that in the proposed harvester, despite that the APBs or PPBs
are subjected to the centrifugal force, the resulting stiffening effect is
relatively weak due to their relatively small rotational mounting radius
as well as high structural stiffness [41]. Therefore, in the following
simulation, the centrifugal stiffening effect on APB or PPB is neglected.
The simulation results show that the fundamental resonant frequencies
of APB and PPB are respectively 69.04 Hz and 85.54 Hz, indicating
that the auxetic structure will reduce the resonant frequency of the
cantilever beam.
In order to investigate the mechanical properties of APB and PPB
during the impact process, an impulsive force of 10 𝑁 is applied at their
free end in FEM for deriving the displacement and stress distributions.
3
Applied Energy 331 (2023) 120355
It can be observed in Fig. 3 that the APB, which has negative Poisson’s
ratio, exhibits the lateral expansion along 2-axis (Fig. 3(b)) when it is
stretched along 1-axis (Fig. 3(a)). However, different from this, when
the PPB is stretched along 1-axis (Fig. 3(c)), the lateral contraction
along 2-axis (Fig. 3(d)) is induced, indicating its positive Poisson’s ratio.
Specifically, the maximum displacements that take place at the free
end of the APB along 1-axis and 2-axis are almost 1.55 and 1.27 times
of those of PPB. Looking into the corresponding stress distribution of
their piezoelectric buzzers in Fig. 4, a significant increase (2 times)
of maximum stress is observed in APB (Fig. 4(a)) compared with that
in PPB (Fig. 4(b)). It can be observed that the maximum stress of
the piezoelectric buzzer on the APB is calculated to be 7.64 MPa. For
the same types of PZT materials, it has been reported that their yield
strengths are within the range between 30 MPa and 50 MPa [61,62].
This indicates that our designed ASIEH can withstand the induced stress
and operate safely. Furthermore, as shown in Table 2, 𝜎 11 and 𝜎 22 of
the piezoelectric buzzer on PPB exhibit different signs (−0.433 MPa
and 2.016 MPa) whereas those of the piezoelectric buzzer on APB have
the same sign (0.796 MPa and 2.803 MPa). In addition, 𝜎 11 and 𝜎 22
of the piezoelectric buzzer on APB are both higher than those of the
piezoelectric buzzer on PPB. These verify the proposed assumption.
S. Fang et al. Applied Energy 331 (2023) 120355

Table 1
Material and structural parameters of APB and PPB.
Part Parameter Symbol Value Unit

Brass film of piezoelectric Length 𝑙b 20 mm

buzzer of APB or PPB
Width 𝑤b 20 mm
Thickness ℎb 0.2 mm
Density 𝜌b 8800 kg/m3
Young’s modulus 𝐸b 90 GPa
Poisson’s ratio 𝜈b 0.32

PZT-5A layer of piezoelectric Length 𝑙p 20 mm

buzzer of APB or PPB
Width 𝑤p 20 mm
Thickness ℎp 0.2 mm
Density 𝜌p 7750 kg/m3
Coupling matrix 𝑑31 , 𝑑32 −1.71e−10 C/N
𝑑33 3.74e−10 C/N
𝑑24 , 𝑑15 5.84e−10 C/N
Compliance matrix 𝑠𝐸11 , 𝑠𝐸22 1.64e−11 1/Pa
𝑠𝐸12 −5.74e−12 1/Pa
𝑠𝐸13 , 𝑠𝐸23 −7.22e−12 1/Pa
𝑠𝐸33 1.88e−11 1/Pa
𝑠𝐸44 , 𝑠𝐸55 4.75e−11 1/Pa
𝑠𝐸66 4.43e−11 1/Pa

Auxetic structure of APB Width 𝑤1 20 mm

𝑤2 7 mm
Thickness ℎ1 3 mm
ℎ2 2.5 mm

Beam substrate of APB or PPB Length 𝑙0 75 mm

Width 𝑤0 20 mm
Thickness ℎ0 1.5 mm
Density 𝜌0 1500 kg/m3
Young’s modulus 𝐸0 2.5 GPa
Poisson’s ratio 𝜈0 0.36

Epoxy Thickness ℎe 0.2 mm

Density 𝜌e 1100 kg/m3
Young’s modulus 𝐸e 0.02 GPa
Poisson’s ratio 𝜈e 0.35

,belowfloat=15pt Table 2
Average stresses of the piezoelectric buzzers on APB and PPB along 1-axis and 2-axis.
Beam type 𝜎 11 (MPa) 𝜎 22 (MPa) 𝜎 11 +𝜎 22 (MPa)
APB 0.796 2.803 3.599
PPB −0.433 2.016 1.583

2.2.2. Centrifugal softening driving beam

Due to the relatively high rotational mounting radius and low
structural stiffness of the inverted driving beam, the centrifugal force
will pose a significant softening effect on it. This indicates that with
the increasing rotational frequency, the driving beam is softened and
the impact force is increased, leading to the improvement of the
output power of APBs. In fact, with the increase of rotational radius,
the centrifugal softening effect will be strengthened so that the reso-
nant frequency of the driving beam will be decreased. Therefore, by
appropriately selecting the rotational radius, the ultra-low-frequency
rotational energy harvesting can be achieved.
With the softening effect, the vibration amplitude of the driving
beam will be relatively large so that its shear deformation and position-
dependent moment of inertia should be taken into account. As shown
in Fig. 5(a), it is assumed that the coordinate system 𝑥–𝑦–𝑧 is attached
at the clamped end of the driving beam and follows its rotation. The
Fig. 3. The displacement distributions of the energy harvesters: ASIEH along (a) 1-axis
relation between its strain and displacement fields can be written
and (b) 2-axis; PSIEH along (c) 1-axis and (d) 2-axis. as [63]:
( )
1 𝜕𝑞𝑘 𝜕𝑞 1 𝜕𝑞𝑚 𝜕𝑞𝑚
𝑆𝑘𝑙 = + 𝑙 +
2 𝜕𝑥𝑙 𝜕𝑥𝑘 2 𝜕𝑥𝑘 𝜕𝑥𝑙 (3)
(𝐿𝑁) (𝑁𝐿𝑁)
= 𝑆𝑘𝑙 + 𝑆𝑘𝑙 (𝑘, 𝑙 = 𝑦, 𝑧)

4
S. Fang et al. Applied Energy 331 (2023) 120355

Fig. 4. The stress distributions of piezoelectric buzzers in the energy harvesters: (a) ASIEH and (b) PSIEH.

Table 3
Material and structural parameters of driving beam.
Part Parameter Symbol Value Unit
Beam Length 𝑙d 110 mm
Width 𝑤d 15 mm
Thickness ℎd 0.2 mm
Density 𝜌d 7850 kg/m3
Young’s modulus 𝐸d 200 GPa
Poisson’s ratio 𝜈d 0.3
Proof mass Length 𝑙m 8 mm
Width 𝑤m 15 mm
Thickness ℎm 4 mm
Density 𝜌m 7850 kg/m3
Young’s modulus 𝐸m 200 GPa
Radius of curvature 𝑅m 1 mm
of contact surface
Poisson’s ratio 𝜈m 0.3

that the fundamental resonant frequency of the driving beam without

Fig. 5. (a) Schematic of the centrifugal softening driving beam. In (a), the driving
beam has one end clamped at the 𝑦 axis and rotates around the rotational axis, and the
centrifugal forces acted on the beam substrate 𝐹cbeam and tip mass 𝐹cmass are plotted. (b)
Resonant frequency of driving beam with centrifugal effect 𝑓d and rotational frequency
𝑓 versus 𝑓 . (c) 𝑓d and 𝑓 (=2.5 Hz) versus rotational radius 𝑟.
where a Lagrange strain tensor is adopted for the description. 𝑞k and 𝑞l
(𝐿𝑁) (𝑁𝐿𝑁)
are the displacement vector fields. 𝑆𝑘𝑙 and 𝑆𝑘𝑙 are respectively
the linear and nonlinear strains, in which the nonlinear term is included
to take the centrifugal softening effect into account.
Considering that the inverted driving beam is mounted at the rota-
tional radius 𝑟 and rotating at the angular frequency 𝜔, the centrifugal
force acting on its tip mass 𝐹cmass and beam substrate 𝐹cbeam should be
taken into account. These can be simulated as the body force 𝑏𝑖 acting
on the tip mass and beam substrate as follows:
( )
𝑏𝑥 = 𝜌𝜔2 𝑟 + 𝑙0 − 𝑥 − 𝑞𝑥
𝑏𝑦 = 0 (4)
( )
𝑏𝑧 = −𝜌𝜔2 𝑧 + 𝑞𝑧
where 𝜌 = 𝜌(𝑥, 𝑦, 𝑧) is the position-dependent mass density of driv-
ing beam. 𝑙0 is the distance between the tip mass center and the
root of driving beam. Due to the fact that the driving beam mainly
operates at the bending mode, the values of 𝑞𝑥 will be much lower
than 𝑞𝑧 . With parameters given in Table 3, the FEM simulation shows
centrifugal effect is 3.97 Hz. The relation between the fundamental
resonant frequency of the driving beam with centrifugal effect 𝜔d and
the rotational frequency 𝜔 can be expressed through the following
equation:
√
𝐾
𝜔d = 𝜔2d0 − c 𝜔2 (5)
𝑀d
where 𝐾c (≥ 0) and 𝑀d are respectively the equivalent centrifugal
softening coefficient and mass of driving beam. 𝜔d0 is the fundamental
resonant frequency without centrifugal effect. The simulation is con-
ducted to derive the relationship between the fundamental resonant
frequency of driving beam with centrifugal effect 𝑓d (= 𝜔d ∕2𝜋) and
rotational frequency 𝑓 (= 𝜔∕2𝜋) or rotational radius 𝑟, the results of
which are shown in Fig. 5(b) and (c). It can be observed that with
the increase of 𝑓 (Fig. 5(b)) or 𝑟 (Fig. 5(c)), 𝑓d decreases due to the
strengthening of centrifugal softening effect. As shown in Fig. 5(b), the
intersection point between the varying 𝑓d and 𝑓 denotes the rotational
frequency with the peak power without impact (2.5 Hz) at the rota-
tional radius of 35 mm. This indicates that in the ASIEH, around this
frequency point, the vibration amplitude of the driving beam would
be large, leading to its high impact force with APBs and therefore the
high output power. In fact, due to the frequency-up conversion, the
rotational frequency with peak power with impact will increase. Based
on the curve fitting of 𝑓d versus 𝑓 in Fig. 5(b), the value of 𝐾c is found
to be 0.0158 N/m/(rad/s)2 with 𝑀d being 9.931 g. As for Fig. 5(c), the
intersection point between 𝑓d and the constant 𝑓 of 2.5 Hz indicates
that if without impact, the rotational radius with the peak power is
40.5 mm. If with impact, this value will increase. In principle, the
rotational radius should be properly selected in demand of the ultra-low
operating rotational frequency.

5
S. Fang et al.
Fig. 6. Lumped parameter model of the ASIEH.
2.2.3. Electromechanical model and system dynamics
With the combination of the centrifugal softening effect of the
driving beam and the auxetic structure of the piezoelectric beams, the
proposed ASIEH can produce the superior energy output through the
impact between them (with the distance of 𝑑). The working principle
of the system has been introduced in Section 2.1. The proposed ASIEH
can be modeled as an electromechanical system under the periodic
gravitational excitation with the lumped parameter method as shown
in Fig. 6. The basis for this is that for each beam (driving beam or
APB), we describe the dynamics of the point of interest (usually the
free end of beam) in terms of certain lumped parameters, which include
the equivalent mass, stiffness (structural and impact stiffness), damping
and electromechanical coupling coefficient [64]. For the conventional
lump-parameter model for the driving beam and the PPBs in the PSIEH,
the equivalent mass can be obtained by expressing the total kinetic
energy of the beam in terms of its velocity at the tip, whereas the
equivalent stiffness can be obtained from the static deflection relation
of the beam at its tip. However, for the complex design of the APBs in
the ASIEH, lumped parameters are expected to be obtained through the
experiments.
In the system, the piezoelectric elements of APBs can be modeled as
equivalent current sources connected with internal capacitance, which
are assumed to connect with their respective external resistances. The
output power is calculated through adding those produced by two
APBs. Under the derivation of force balance and current balance [52,
64], the governing equations of the proposed ASIEH can be expressed
as:
( )
⎧ 𝑀d 𝑢̈ d + 𝐶d 𝑢̇ d + 𝐾d − 𝐾c 𝜔2 𝑢d = 𝐹a2 − 𝐹a1 − 𝑀d 𝑔 cos (𝜔𝑡)
⎪ 𝑀 𝑢̈ + 𝐶 𝑢̇ + 𝐾 𝑢 + 𝜃 𝑣 = 𝐹 − 𝑀 𝑔 cos (𝜔𝑡)
⎪ a1 a1 a1 a1 a1 a1 a1 𝑎1 a1 a1
⎨ 𝑀a2 𝑢̈ a2 + 𝐶a2 𝑢̇ a2 + 𝐾a2 𝑢a2 + 𝜃a2 𝑣a2 = −𝐹a2 − 𝑀a2 𝑔 cos (𝜔𝑡) (6)
⎪ −𝜃a1 𝑢̇ a1 + 𝐶pa1 𝑣̇ a1 = −𝑣a1 ∕𝑅a1
⎪ APB-I. By setting parameters in Table 1 and 3, the simulation results of
⎩ −𝜃a2 𝑢̇ a2 + 𝐶pa2 𝑣̇ a2 = −𝑣a2 ∕𝑅a2 ,
where the subscripts of d, a1 and a2 respectively denote the parameters
of driving beam, APB-I and APB-II. 𝑀d , 𝑀a1 and 𝑀a2 are the equiva-
lent mass. 𝐶d , 𝐶a1 and 𝐶a2 are the equivalent damping. 𝐾d (=𝑀d 𝜔2d0 ),
𝐾a1 (=𝑀a1 𝜔2a1 ) and 𝐾a2 (=𝑀a2 𝜔2a2 ) are the equivalent stiffness with 𝜔a1
and 𝜔a2 denoting the resonant frequencies of APBs. 𝑢d , 𝑢a1 and 𝑢a2
are the displacements of equivalent mass. 𝑔 denotes the gravitational
constant (9.8 m/s2 ). 𝜃a1 and 𝜃a2 , 𝐶pa1 and 𝐶pa2 , 𝑅a1 and 𝑅a2 , 𝑣a1
and 𝑣a2 respectively denote the equivalent electromechanical coupling
coefficients, capacitances, resistances and output voltage across the
resistances. Note that the assumptions have been made that two APBs
are identical, which therefore have the same parameters. 𝑡 denotes the
6
Applied Energy 331 (2023) 120355
time. 𝐹a1 and 𝐹a2 are respectively the absolute values of impact force
acting on APB-I and APB-II. The electromechanical model of PSIEH has
the same form as Eq. (6) except for the values of several parameters
including 𝑀a1 and 𝑀a2 , 𝐶a1 and 𝐶a2 , 𝜃a1 and 𝜃a2 as well as 𝑅a1 and 𝑅a2 .
The calculation of impact force is of significance to predict the
system dynamics and energy output as well as reveal the influence
of centrifugal softening effect. In the proposed harvester, the tip mass
of driving beam is designed to have rounded corner, therefore its
impact with APBs can be modeled as Hertzian elliptical contact [65].
Assumptions have been made that the contact between the tip mass of
driving beam and APBs is uniform along the length of rounded corner.
Furthermore, it is assumed that the contact region is relatively small
compared with two contact objects. Based on these, 𝐹a1 and 𝐹a2 can be
respectively calculated by:
( ) ( )
𝐹a1 = 𝑘im 𝑢d − 𝑑 − 𝑢a1 𝐻 𝑢d − 𝑑 − 𝑢a1
( ) ( ) (7)
𝐹a2 = 𝑘im 𝑢a2 − 𝑑 − 𝑢d 𝐻 𝑢a2 − 𝑑 − 𝑢d
where 𝑘im is the impact stiffness. 𝑑 is the symmetric impact distance
between the tip mass of driving beam and APB-I or APB-II. According to
the Hertzian contact theory, with the preset dimensions and materials
of contact surfaces, the impact stiffness can be derived by linearly
fitting the curve representing the relation between the impact force (𝐹a1
or 𝐹a2 ) and the local indentation (𝛿a1 or 𝛿a2 ) as follows (taking 𝐹a1 and
𝛿a1 for example):
( )( ( ( )))
𝐹a1 𝑘a1 + 𝑘m 4𝐿3c 1 1
𝛿a1 = 1 + ln ( ) + (8)
𝐿c 𝐹a1 𝑘a1 + 𝑘m 𝑅a1 𝑅m
( ) ( )
where 𝑅𝑖 , 𝑘𝑖 = 1 − 𝑣2𝑖 ∕ 𝜋𝐸𝑖 , 𝑣𝑖 and 𝐸𝑖 with 𝑖 = m and a1 respectively
represent the radius of curvature, contact stiffness, Poisson’s ratio and
Young’s modulus of contact surfaces of the tip mass of driving beam or
impact stiffness 𝑘im versus contact length 𝐿c are shown in Fig. 7. It can
be observed that 𝑘im increases with the increase of 𝐿c . In this work, 𝐿c
is set to be 10 mm, leading to 𝑘im being 4.659 × 106 N∕m.
By utilizing Eqs. (6)–(8), the system dynamics are simulated to
illustrate the operating principle of ASIEH. The simulation parameters
are set as the same as those identified by experiments as shown in
Table 4. The results of the displacement amplitude of driving beam
𝐷m , the amplitude of the relative displacement between the driving
beam and APB-I or APB-II, 𝑅𝐷m (𝑅𝐷m = 𝑢d − 𝑑 − 𝑢a1 or 𝑅𝐷m =
𝑢a2 − 𝑑 − 𝑢d ), and the root mean square (RMS) output voltage generated
by APB-I or APB-II 𝑉RMS versus 𝑓 at the impact distance of 57 mm are
respectively plotted in Fig. 8(a), (b) and (c). It can be observed that
S. Fang et al.
Fig. 7. Impact stiffness 𝑘im versus contact length 𝐿c .
the system subsequently experiences the vibration mode, impact mode,
and trapping mode with the increase of the rotational frequency 𝑓 .
The vibration mode indicates that all beams vibrate freely without the
impact effect. The impact mode indicates that there exists the impact
between the driving beam and the piezoelectric beams during their
vibration. The trapping mode indicates that the driving beam is trapped
on one of the piezoelectric beams without impact and vibration.
The occurrence of three modes depends on the centrifugal softening
effect acting on the driving beam, which is influenced by the rotational
frequency 𝑓 . At 𝑓 that is lower than 1.91 Hz, the centrifugal softening
effect of the driving beam is weak, and its vibration amplitude 𝐷m is
smaller than 57 mm so that 𝑅𝐷m is smaller than 0. Therefore, the
impact does not occur and all beams freely vibrate. In this vibration
mode, 𝐷m and 𝑅𝐷m increase with the increasing 𝑓 whereas 𝑉RMS is
very low. When 𝑓 increases to be between 1.91 Hz and 3.5 Hz, the
centrifugal softening effect of the driving beam is strengthened so that
𝐷m becomes larger than 57 mm and 𝑅𝐷m becomes larger than 0,
leading to the occurrence of impact and the gradually increasing 𝑉RMS .
In this impact mode, the increasing 𝐷m and 𝑅𝐷m lead the improvement
of impact force and energy output, despite that 𝑅𝐷m looks small due to
the relatively stiff APB-I or APB-II. However, when 𝑓 further increases
to be higher than 3.5 Hz, the centrifugal effect is so strong that the
driving beam is trapped on APB-I, resulting in the decreasing 𝐷m and
𝑉RMS .
The corresponding phase portraits of driving beam, APB-I and APB-
II in the vibration, impact and trapping modes are plotted in Fig. 8(d)–
(o). It can be observed that if without impact, the phase portraits
(Fig. 8(d)–(f)) exhibit the shape of simple circles. The displacement and
velocity of driving beam and two piezoelectric beams are the largest in
the impact mode (Fig. 8(g)–(l)) compared with those in other modes.
Specifically, the phase portraits of driving beam at 3.5 Hz in Fig. 8(j)
indicate its vibration instability. The reason for this is that 3.5 Hz is
the transition frequency from the impact mode to the trapping mode,
at which the strengthening of centrifugal effect tends to trap the driving
beam into one side. Furthermore, the phase portraits of APB-I and APB-
II in the impact mode (Fig. 8(h) and (i), (k) and (l)) indicate that they
experience damped oscillation cycles with different amplitudes due to
the occurrence of multiple impacts [41]. In addition, it can be seen that
the phase portraits of driving beam in the vibration and impact modes
go across the origin whereas those in the trapping mode only lie on
one side (Fig. 8(m)), leading to the slight impact with only the APB-II
(Fig. 8(o)). In this case, the energy output dramatically decreases. Note
that the operating principle of PSIEH is similar to that of ASIEH.
3. Experimental validation
3.1. Experimental setup and prototypes
In order to validate the proposed design, the experimental setup is
built and the prototypes of ASIEH and PSIEH are fabricated as shown in
Fig. 9(a), (b) and (c), respectively. It can be observed in Fig. 9(a) that
the energy harvester is mounted on a rotor, which is driven by a servo
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Applied Energy 331 (2023) 120355
Table 4
Identified model parameters of ASIEH and PSIEH.
Parameter Unit ASIEH PSIEH
𝑀d g 9.931 9.931
𝐶d N/(m/s) 0.0162 0.0162
𝜔d0 rad/s 23.311 23.311
𝐾c N/m/(rad/s)2 0.0158 0.0158
𝑘im N/m 4.659 × 106 4.659 × 106
𝑀a1 , 𝑀a2 g 0.949 1.102
𝐶a1 , 𝐶a2 N/(m/s) 0.0375 0.0560
𝜔a1 , 𝜔a2 rad/s 439.697 529.107
𝜃a1 , 𝜃a2 V/N 2.363 × 10−4 1.850 × 10−4
𝐶pa1 , 𝐶pa2 nF 42.5 42.5
motor (ECMA-E21310RS, Delta) and controlled by a servo drive (ASD-
B2-1021-B, Delta) and a motion controller (DKC-Y110, YiXING). As the
rotor rotates, the gravity will excite the driving beam to vibrate, which
therefore periodically impacts two piezoelectric beams to generate the
output voltage. As the rotational frequency increases, the centrifugal
softening force on the driving beam will be strengthened, leading to
the improvement of impact force on piezoelectric beams and therefore
the increased output voltage. The output voltage is transmitted in the
wires through the slip ring (SNG012-12, Senring) to the oscilloscope
(InfiniiVision 3000 X-series, Keysight).
The details of ASIEH and PSIEH are presented in Fig. 9(b) and
(c), respectively. It can be observed that the only difference between
ASIEH and PSIEH is that the substrates of two piezoelectric beams
are auxetic or plain. APBs in ASIEH and PPBs in PSIEH are made
of polylactic acid by 3D printing whereas the driving beam and its
tip mass are made of stainless steel by machining. The objectives of
the following experiments are to demonstrate the improved energy
harvesting performance of our proposed ASIEH at ultra-low rotational
frequencies compared with PSIEH, as well as other related works in
literature.
3.2. Model parameter identification and impedance matching experiments
For the analysis of system dynamics and energy output of ASIEH
and PSIEH, the model parameters of energy harvester in Eq. (6) should
be identified. The mass is measured by a high-precision electronic
balance (BL-320H, SHIMADZU). The equivalent capacitance is mea-
sured through an impedance analyser (4294 A, Agilent). The equivalent
damping, resonant frequency, electromechanical coupling coefficient
are obtained from logarithmic decrement technique of free vibration.
Due to the difficulty to experimentally test the values of 𝐾c and 𝑘im ,
they are directly determined from the simulation results in Fig. 5(b)
and 7. The model parameters of ASIEH and PSIEH are given in Table 4.
For the fair comparison of ASIEH and PSIEH, the impedance match-
ing experiments should be conducted to obtain their superior energy
harvesting performance. Before this, the open-circuit experiments be-
tween 1.75 and 3.75 Hz at the impact distance of 57 mm are conducted
to derive their optimum rotational frequencies with highest energy
output. The corresponding experimental results of the maximum output
voltage 𝑉o and the RMS output voltage 𝑉RMS generated by ASIEH and
PSIEH versus rotational frequency 𝑓 under the open-circuit condition
are shown in Fig. 10(a) and (b), respectively. It can be observed that
for the ASIEH, the maximum open-circuit output voltage can reach 57.1
V, and the optimum rotational frequencies for two APBs in ASIEH and
two PPBs in PSIEH are both 3.5 Hz. Due to the difficulty to fabricate
two identical APBs or PPBs with 3D printing error, the discrepancy is
observed in their output voltage. With the knowledge of the optimum
rotational frequency, the output power 𝑃 versus the connected resis-
tance 𝑅a1 or 𝑅a2 at 3.5 Hz is shown in Fig. 10(c). One can see that the
optimum resistances for two APBs in ASIEH or two PPBs in PSIEH are
respectively 200 kΩ and 140 kΩ, indicating that the auxetic structure
will increase the optimum resistance since it decreases the resonant
S. Fang et al. Applied Energy 331 (2023) 120355

Fig. 8. Simulation results of (a) displacement amplitude of driving beam 𝐷m versus rotational frequency 𝑓 , (b) amplitude of relative displacement between driving beam and
APB-I or APB-II 𝑅𝐷m versus rotational frequency 𝑓 , and (c) RMS voltage of APB-I and APB-II 𝑉RMS , (d)–(o) phase portraits with (d)–(f), (g)–(i), (j)–(l) and (m)–(o) respectively
denoting the results at 1, 2.5, 3.5 and 3.75 Hz.

Fig. 9. (a) Experimental setup. Detailed view of the (b) ASIEH and (c) PSIEH.

8
S. Fang et al. Applied Energy 331 (2023) 120355

Fig. 10. (a) Open-circuit voltage and (b) RMS voltage versus rotational frequency 𝑓 , and (c) effective output power 𝑃 versus connected resistance 𝑅a1 /𝑅a2 of APB-I and APB-II
in ASIEH or PPB-I and PPB-II in PSIEH.

Fig. 11. Simulation and experimental results of (a) total output power, (b) output power of APB-I and PPB-I, and (c) output power of APB-II and PPB-II in ASIEH and PSIEH,
(d)–(s) output voltage in time domain with (d)–(g), (h)–(k), (l)–(o) and (p)–(s) respectively denoting the results at 1, 2.5, 3.5 and 3.75 Hz.

frequency [66]. In the following experiments, ASIEH and PSIEH are
connected with their respective optimum resistances of 200 kΩ and 140
kΩ .
3.3. Energy output comparison
With identified system parameters, the experimental and simulation
results of energy output in the frequency and time domain are plotted in
Fig. 11. It can be seen that overall the simulation results agree well with
the experimental ones. With the increase of rotational frequency 𝑓 , the
total output power in the ASIEH and PSIEH (Fig. 11(a)) and the output
power of APB-I or PPB-I (Fig. 11(b)), APB-II or PPB-II (Fig. 11(c))
are very low in the vibration mode, gradually increase in the impact
mode and dramatically decrease in the trapping mode. The peak total
output power of ASIEH is 0.673 mW, which is increased by 200.45%
compared with that of PSIEH (0.224 mW). The reason for this is due to

9
S. Fang et al.
Table 5
Performance comparison among typical reported rotational energy harvesters utilizing centrifugal effect.
References Harvester
mass
(g)
Mei et al. [50] 9.3
Roundy and Tola [67] – ∼2.0
Rui et al. [51] 42.7
Zhang et al. [68] ∼18.0
Zou et al. [49] 52.9
Fang et al. [52] 12.6
Guan and Liao [48] 505.0
This work 16.33
the high stress and strain distribution and the stress summary resulting
from the negative Poisson’s ratio with the auxetic structure in the
ASIEH. Since the centrifugal softening effect can already increase the
energy output at ultra-low rotational frequencies whereas the auxetic
structure can further improve the energy output, the proposed ASIEH
exhibits superior energy harvesting performance as shown in Table 5
and discussed later in this section.
Specifically, it is found in Fig. 11(a)–(c) that the rotational fre-
quency ranges within which the vibration, impact and trapping modes
occur in the ASIEH and PSIEH are nearly the same. The corresponding
voltage responses of APBs in the ASIEH and PPBs in the PSIEH are
presented in Fig. 11(d)–(s). One can see that at 1 Hz in the vibration
mode (Fig. 11(d)–(g)), the output voltage values in the ASIEH and
PSIEH are both small, and the voltage trajectories exhibit periodic
sinusoidal waves due to the free beam vibration. With 𝑓 increasing to
2.5 Hz (Fig. 11(h)–(k)), due to the impact, APBs in the ASIEH and PPBs
in the PSIEH experience intermittent damped oscillations and gener-
ate regular ring-down shape voltage histories correspondingly. In this
case, 𝑉RMS of APB-I and APB-II are respectively 68.97% and 115.92%
higher than those of PPB-I and PPB-II. As 𝑓 is further increased to
3.5 Hz (Fig. 11(l)–(o)), the voltage trajectories of APBs or PPBs become
aperiodic due to the quasi-periodic oscillations of driving beam that
influence the impact dynamics (Fig. 8(j)–(l)). At this frequency, 𝑉RMS of
APB-I and APB-II are respectively increased by 106.55% and 123.34%
compared with those of PPB-I and PPB-II. At the higher 𝑓 of 3.75 Hz
(Fig. 11(p)–(s)), the centrifugal effect is strengthened so that the driving
beam falls into the trapping mode. Therefore, it can be observed that
the driving beam only slightly impacts the APB-II in the ASIEH and
only slightly impacts the PPB-I in the PSIEH. In this mode, the energy
output in both harvesters dramatically decreases.
It should be noted that the primary objective of this work is to
demonstrate the superior energy output of the proposed auxetic cen-
trifugal softening impact energy harvester at ultra-low rotational fre-
quencies with relatively simple harvester structure. In Section 1, it
has been illustrated that utilizing the centrifugal effect can improve
the output power with the relatively simple structure, whereas the
existing harvesters with centrifugal effect still have limited energy
output especially at ultra-low rotational frequencies. For comparison,
the key characteristics of some typical rotational energy harvesters
utilizing centrifugal effect are shown in Table 5, including the harvester
mass, rotational frequency, average power and average power density.
Despite that a large number of parameters exist to characterize the
rotational energy harvesters, the harvester mass and working frequency
as well as the attainable power level are important for the appli-
cations including human bodies or rotating machines such as wind
turbine blades. It is observed that the proposed harvester can provide
remarkably high power density (41.23 μW∕g) compared with others.
Furthermore, it can be seen that other ultra-low-frequency rotational
energy harvesters [50,51,67,68] can only produce dozens of micro
watts whereas the proposed ASIEH can produce high output power with
hundreds of micro watts at ultra-low rotational frequency. Despite that
the rotational energy harvester proposed by Guan and Liao [48] pro-
duces the highest output power among the rotational energy harvesters
Applied Energy 331 (2023) 120355
Rotational Average Average
frequency power power density
(Hz) (μW) (μW∕g)
1.0 50.0 5.38
10.0 –
4.2 52.1 1.22
∼5.5 61.0 3.39
7.0 564.0 10.66
9.5 0.5 0.04
13.5 825.0 1.63
3.5 673.34 41.23
in Table 5, it is worth noting that the power of this harvester is acquired
when it is rotated at high frequency of 13.5 Hz. Therefore, the proposed
ASIEH exhibits superior comprehensive energy harvesting performance
compared with typical rotational energy harvesters in Table 5.
3.4. Parametric studies
In this section, two important parameters are investigated including
the impact distance 𝑑 and the rotational radius 𝑟. Experiments have
been conducted to investigate the energy harvesting performances of
the ASIEH and PSIEH with the variation of impact distance 𝑑. The
experimental results of the total output power, the output power gen-
erated by APB-I and PPB-I, and APB-II and PPB-II in the ASIEH and
PSIEH versus the rotational frequency 𝑓 at 𝑑 of 21, 37 and 57 mm
are plotted in Fig. 12(a), (b) and (c), respectively. It can be observed
that with the increase of 𝑑, the peak output power for both ASIEH
and PSIEH in three subfigures increases whereas the corresponding
frequency bandwidth decreases. This can be more clearly observed in
Fig. 12(d) and (e), which respectively show the peak total output power
𝑃p and the frequency bandwidth 𝐵 versus the impact distance 𝑑. At 𝑑
of 21, 37 and 57 mm, 𝑃p of the ASIEH is respectively increased by
169.07%, 140.07% and 200.45% compared with that of the PSIEH,
and 𝐵 of the ASIEH is respectively increased by 10.34%, 45.35%
and 19.40% compared with that of the PSIEH. Therefore, it can be
concluded that with the variation of impact distance, both the peak
power and frequency bandwidth of the ASIEH are both higher than
those of the PSIEH.
In order to investigate more potentials of the proposed ASIEH, its
energy output under different rotational radius 𝑟 with comparison of
PSIEH is simulated through the validated theoretical model. Before this,
the values of the resonant frequency of driving beam with centrifugal
effect 𝑓d under different rotational radius 𝑟 and rotational frequency
𝑓 are derived first, the results of which are plotted in Fig. 13(a). It
can be observed that for each 𝑟, 𝑓d continuously decreases with the
increase of 𝑓 . However, for the higher 𝑟, the decrease speed of 𝑓d
increases, indicating the increase of 𝐾c , which has been demonstrated
in Fig. 13(b). With the knowledge of 𝐾c and other parameters in
Table 3, Eq. (6) is simulated to derive the total output power of ASIEH
and PSIEH versus 𝑓 and 𝑟 as shown in Fig. 13(c) and (d), respectively.
It is observed that the maximum total output power in the ASIEH and
PSIEH respectively exists in the region with low and high values of 𝑟.
For both harvesters, when 𝑟 is lower than approximately 30 mm, the
peak frequency shifts to be lower with the increase of 𝑟. However, at
𝑟 of 30 mm, the peak frequency suddenly increases but then continues
to decrease with the further increase of 𝑟. Most importantly, no matter
how the rotational radius is varied, the peak power and frequency
bandwidth of the ASIEH are higher than those of the PSIEH.
4. Conclusions
In this paper, an auxetic centrifugal softening impact energy har-
vester is proposed to achieve high energy output at ultra-low rotational
frequencies. The main motivation is to break through the bottleneck
10
S. Fang et al. Applied Energy 331 (2023) 120355

Fig. 12. Experimental results of (a) total output power, (b) output power of APB-I and PPB-I, and (c) output power of APB-II and PPB-II versus rotational frequency 𝑓 in ASIEH
and PSIEH at the impact distance of 21, 37 and 57 mm, (c) peak total output power 𝑃p and (d) frequency bandwidth 𝐵 versus impact distance 𝑑 of ASIEH and PSIEH.

Fig. 13. Simulation results of (a) resonant frequency of driving beam with centrifugal effect 𝑓d versus rotational radius 𝑟 and rotational frequency 𝑓 , (b) centrifugal softening
coefficient 𝐾c versus rotational radius 𝑟, total output power of (c) ASIEH and (d) PSIEH versus 𝑟 and 𝑓 .

of energy harvesting performance with centrifugal effect whereas re-
serving the relatively simple harvesting structure. The harvester is
composed of a centrifugal-softening driving beam that impacts on
two auxetic piezoelectric beams to generate electric energy during the
rotation. With this harvester, the combination of centrifugal effect and
auxetic structure leads to the superior energy harvesting performance
at ultra-low rotational frequencies. The mathematical model and the
simulation indicate that the addition of longitudinal and lateral stresses
with same sign of the auxetic structure boosts the energy output
significantly. Furthermore, the simulation results of resonant frequency
and system dynamics show that the driving beam is softened with the
increasing rotational frequency so that it subsequently experiences the
vibration mode, impact mode and trapping mode, within which the
impact mode produces the highest output power.
Experiments are conducted and it is shown that the results of math-
ematical model match well with the experimental ones. In experiments,
the proposed ASIEH can generate the maximum open-circuit output
voltage of 57.1 V. Connected with their respective optimum resistances,
ASIEH and PSIEH (without the auxetic structure) can produce up to
0.673 and 0.224 mW at 3.5 Hz, respectively, indicating an increase
of 200.45% with the auxetic structure. Parametric studies show that
the peak power and frequency bandwidth of the ASIEH and PSIEH
respectively increase and decrease with the increasing impact distance.
Specifically, with the varying impact gap, the maximum bandwidth

11
S. Fang et al.
increase percentage of the ASIEH compared with that of the PSIEH is
45.35% as shown in experiment. Furthermore, no matter how the im-
pact gap and rotational radius are varied, the power and bandwidth of
the ASIEH are higher than those of the PSIEH. Overall, the comparison
with other typical rotational energy harvesters utilizing centrifugal ef-
fect in literature indicate that the proposed ASIEH produces remarkably
high power density (41.23 μW/g), and high output power at ultra-low
rotational frequency.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Shitong Fang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis,
Writing – original draft. Keyu Chen: Conceptualization, Methodology,
Writing – review & editing. Zhihui Lai: Investigation, Writing – review
& editing. Shengxi Zhou: Investigation, Writing – review & editing.
Wei-Hsin Liao: Supervision, Conceptualization, Writing – review &
editing, Project administration.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to
influence the work reported in this paper.
Data availability
Data will be made available on request.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Founda-
tion of China (Grant Nos. 52205114, U2013603), The Chinese Univer-
sity of Hong Kong (Project ID: 4055178), the Innovation and Technol-
ogy Commission, PR China (Project No. MRP/030/21), the Hong Kong
Special Administrative Region, PR China, the National Key R&D Pro-
gram of China (No. 2020YFA0711700) and the International Science
and Technology Cooperation Project of Guangdong Province, PR China
(No. 2021A0505030012).
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary material related to this article can be found online
at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2022.120355.
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