Investigating Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting Circuits for Piezoelectric Flags

This paper provides a comparison between two different energy harvesting circuits for a piezoelectric flag subjected to uniform flow. Between two circuits tested, one is Simple Resistive Load, and the other one is the standard AC-DC circuit. To experimentally investigate these circuits, the piezoelectric flag output voltage has been studied under various wind speeds in a wind tunnel. The simple resistive load circuit provides an alternating voltage, and not a DC voltage. The standard AC-DC circuit is used to convert the AC voltage into a DC voltage; however, the power dropped as a result of the voltage drop across the forward-biased diodes.