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Footstep energy harvesting using heel strike-induced airflow for human activity sensing

Title: Footstep energy harvesting using heel strike-induced airflow for human activity sensing
Authors: Fu, H
Cao, K
Xu, R
Bhouri, MA
Martinez-Botas, R
Kim, S-G
Yeatman, EM
Item Type: Conference Paper
Abstract: Body sensor networks are increasingly popular in healthcare, sports, military and security. However, the power supply from conventional batteries is a key bottleneck for the development of body condition monitoring. Energy harvesting from human motion to power wearable or implantable devices is a promising alternative. This paper presents an airflow energy harvester to harness human motion energy from footsteps. An air bladder-turbine energy harvester is designed to convert the footstep motion into electrical energy. The bladders are embedded in shoes to induce airflow from foot-strikes. The turbine is employed to generate electrical energy from airflow. The design parameters of the turbine rotor, including the blade number and the inner diameter of the blades (the diameter of the turbine shaft), were optimized using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method. A prototype was developed and tested with footsteps from a 65 kg person. The peak output power of the harvester was first measured for different resistive loads and showed a maximum value of 90.6 mW with a 30.4 Ω load. The harvested energy was then regulated and stored in a power management circuit. 14.8 mJ was stored in the circuit from 165 footsteps, which means 90 μJ was obtained per footstep. The regulated energy was finally used to fully power a fitness tracker which consists of a pedometer and a Bluetooth module. 7.38 mJ was consumed by the tracker per Bluetooth configuration and data transmission. The tracker operated normally with the harvester working continuously.
Issue Date: 21-Jul-2016
Date of Acceptance: 14-Jun-2016
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/44882
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/BSN.2016.7516245
ISSN: 2376-8886
Publisher: IEEE
Start Page: 124
End Page: 129
Journal / Book Title: 2016 IEEE 13th International Conference on Wearable and Implantable Body Sensor Networks (BSN),
Copyright Statement: © 2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.
Conference Name: 13th IEEE International Conference on Wearable and Implantable Body Sensor Networks (BSN)
Keywords: Science & Technology
Technology
Physical Sciences
Engineering, Electrical & Electronic
Optics
Engineering
DEVICES
DESIGN
Publication Status: Published
Start Date: 2016-06-14
Finish Date: 2016-06-17
Conference Place: San Francisco, CA
Appears in Collections:Mechanical Engineering
Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Centre for Environmental Policy
Grantham Institute for Climate Change
Faculty of Natural Sciences
Faculty of Engineering