Metamodel-assisted design optimization of piezoelectric flex transducer for maximal bio-kinetic energy conversion

Energy-harvesting devices have been widely used to generate electrical power from the bio-kinetic energy of human body movement. A novel piezoelectric flex transducer based on the Cymbal device has been proposed by other researchers for the purpose of energy harvesting. To further improve the efficiency of the device, optimal design of the piezoelectric flex transducer for maximum output power subject to stress and displacement constraints is carried out in this article. Sequential quadratic programming on metamodels generated with genetic programming from a 140-point optimal Latin hypercube design of experiments is used in the optimization. Finally, the optimal design is validated by finite element simulations. The simulations show that the magnitude of the electrical power generated from this optimal piezoelectric flex transducer harvesting device can be up to 6.5 MW when a safety design factor of 2.0 is applied.