Performance of a piezoelectric harvester in thickness-stretch mode of a plate.

We studied mechanical-to-electrical power conversion of a piezoelectric plate driven mechanically into thickness-stretch vibrations. We have derived an analytical solution from the three-dimensional equations of linear piezoelectricity that shows the role of each of the physical parameters in determining the performance of such a piezoelectric device, usually measured by the output power density, the power efficiency, or both. Numerical results are included for illustrating the dependence of the device performance upon these physical parameters.