August 15, 2025
Journal Article

Bio-inspired Bistable Piezoelectric Energy Harvester for Powering Animal Telemetry Tags: Concept Design and Preliminary Experimental Validation

Abstract

This paper presents the concept design, preliminary experimental validation, and performance evaluation of a novel bio-inspired bi-stable piezoelectric energy harvester for self-powered animal telemetry tags. The overall concept design, which includes a bio-inspired attachment and a bi-stable piezoelectric energy harvester, is introduced firstly with a specific application example of marine fish tracking. The self-powered telemetry tag can be externally deployed on fish (dorsal fin) to monitor fish habitats, population, and underwater environment. Inspired by the Venus flytrap’s rapid shape transition, a bistable piezoelectric energy harvester is developed to scavenge energy from fish maneuvering and the surrounding fluid flow for a sustainable power supply. The bistability of the harvester is characterized by the measured force-displacement curve and double potential wells. A bluff body is integrated to the free end of the bistable piezoelectric energy harvester to enhance the structure-fluid interaction for the large-amplitude snap-through vibrations and higher voltage output. Controlled laboratory experiments are conducted in a water tank on the bio-inspired bi-stable piezoelectric energy harvester using a servo motor system to simulate fish swing motion at various conditions to evaluate the power generation performance. The preliminary underwater experimental results demonstrated that the proposed bio-inspired bi-stable piezoelectric could effectively converter fish swing motions into electricity. 17.25 mJ energy was obtained within 130 s under the peak-to-peak swing angle of 30o at 1.5 Hz in the capacitor charging experiments.

Published: August 15, 2025

Citation

Qian F., M. Liu, J. Huang, J. Zhang, H. Jung, Z. Deng, and M. Hajj, et al. 2022. Bio-inspired Bistable Piezoelectric Energy Harvester for Powering Animal Telemetry Tags: Concept Design and Preliminary Experimental Validation. Renewable Energy 187:34-43. PNNL-SA-161165. doi:10.1016/j.renene.2022.01.018