First Graduate Job

I have Finally secured my first Graduate Job with Hoare Lea who are a verry big building services engineering consultancy with office all over the uk and some locations abroad. I think this is a verry good opportunity and i will ensure that i do my verry best to succeed and move forward with my career.

I will be starting with these guys within the birmingham office on the 10/06/2013.


Wish me look!

Graduation Day

The picture below shows a picture of myself and my Grandad.

My grandad was the inspiration and my motivation for me starting and continuing throughout my studies and working life within the electrical industry. He has helped me the good times and the bad times even to the point of researching some information for me within only an hours notice. I truly believe if it wasent for my grandad i wouldn't be where i am today.

Grandad thank you for teaching me everything i will endeavour to ensure the generations to come benefit from the knowledge you passed down to me.

MnP Electrical will live forever. 

RESULTS

 I have finally graduated with a First Class BEng Hons in Electrical Electronic Engineering. 

Final Product Demonstration

Please see the video below:

Thanks for Reading


Kind Regards Daniel Floyd BEng MIET

Final Product and Testing.

The results show that the cantilever beam works better for energy generation than the direct pressure method illustrated through the deformation factor of each. Further physical testing has then been conducted using the chosen material proving that that the applied stress is directly proportional to the generated voltage and that the Piezo generated 16V (direct pressure) and 36V (cantilever beam) therefore illustrating the deformation is greater under the cantilever beam, thus this being the best method which was then used for the energy harvesting application. 

Numerous Piezo Plates connected in an array configuration has been used to step charge an input capacitor through a bridge rectifier. The UVLO monitors the voltage across the capacitor and only allows power flow whilst the capacitor is charged 250mV above the set input voltage. A DC – DC converter regulates the voltage to 3.5V it was then found that this would turn the load on and off. i was then able to stabilize this light source and create extra accessories to demonstrate the full benefit of this power source 

Energy Harvesting

Since completing my research and simulation on the Piezoelectric technology i have been looking at various energy harvesting circuit available on the market. I don't want to reinvent the wheel i would like to utilise as much product as possible, because there are other micro power technologies i decided it would be easier to utilise another form of harvesting circuit rather then to create my own.

Linear Technologies LTC3588 is very good device witch comes in a variety of form either solder on components or as a demonstration board. It was decided between myself and the university that i would use the demonstration board and then they would be able to use this following my departure for future students.

I don't want to give out mass amounts of much technical information into the public realm and therefore please email me for more information regarding this device.

Update on Progress.

I haven't posted in a while because iv been extremely busy with university work we have lots of deadlines. and lots of exams to start revising for. 

Since my research i have understood alot more of the technical details of the piezoelectric technology and how this generates electricity. A 3rd year thesis is just not understanding the technical knowledge but proving you are able to become an expert with in depth knowledge of a particular topic or field. To demonstrate that i am able to grasp the engineering principles behind piezoelectric technology i have decided to take a look at the mathematical model of chosen material. The following formula shows the mathematical model needed to obtain the voltage given under a certain pressure. 

Where G31 is the piezoelectric voltage constant and f3 is the resonant frequency constant. To calculate this i first had to calculate my G3 and F3 values which eventually gave me 36.23V and a quiescent current value of 975nA

To prove my mathematical formula was correct i learnt how to use Comsol Multiphysics and proceeded to build a simulation to how the different pressures would effect the output voltage. To do this i had to build all of the properties of my chosen piezoelectric material and then create a mapped mesh, on completion of this i began to apply different pressures and measured the voltage applied. I then programmed Comsoll to preform a preformed a parametric sweep to generate a graph of the of the voltage against pressure as shown below: 

The graph demonstrates a voltage of -33 V being generated with an applied load of 804N this is a negative voltage due to the direction of which the pressure is applied therefore if we were to reverse the direction of pressure the voltage would be positive although this simulation implies a difference of 3.23V from the calculation of section 4. This is due to the material parameter differences and given the correct material programmes these measurements would be more accurate, which demonstrates that the mathematical equations taken from APC Piezoelectric Ceramics publication are of correct form for the PZT Cantilever beam.  The FEA has allows us to critically analyse and demonstrate that our research into Piezoelectric plates used in the direct effect is ‘FACT’ thus allowing us to progress onto developing an energy harvesting circuit to demonstrate the Piezo energy generator.