Vibration harvesting Studio

Vibration harvesting Studio located in 2115 Etcheverry Hall

Our lab is located in the Mechanical Engineering Department (Etcheverry Hall) of the University of California at Berkeley on the second floor rooms 2115/2117.

Overview
Our research looks into transducer designs at the MEMS and meso scale that convert mechanical vibrations into small amounts of electrical energy. The target is to produce tens of microwatts to tens of milliwatts which is enough to power wireless sensor nodes for a variety of applications from asset monitoring to power monitoring to machine performance.

Several shaker table setups are used to test devices. Characterizations are done with single frequency sinusoidal input vibrations, but recorded real world acceleration data from ambient sources, machine tools, and vehicles can be fed through the shaker tables as well to simulate realistic conditions.

One of the shaker setups including a laser displacement sensor

Laser displacement sensor and electronics box containing harvester and accelerometer.