Brief introduction of research:

With the recent advances in low power electronics it is becoming feasible to solely power devices from piezoelectric harvested energy. Energy harvesting is not a new concept and cranked radios, shake-powered flashlights, wind farms and solar energy have all found commercial uses many times over. Through the use of standard electronic techniques the acquired power can be converted, stored and regulated. The research aims to investigate output levels, efficiency, power conversion, utilisation and storage using multimode excitation, and multiform materials.

In order to cancel noise and vibration it is required to generate an equivalent anti phase signal (to that creating the vibration). By means of sensing the frequency of vibration within a structure through the direct piezoelectric effect, amplifying and phase shifting this signal, before transmitting the signal through the converse piezoelectric effect, it is possible to design a self-powered, non hazards and non invasive vibration suppression technique.

The research looks at both macro and micro systems that are able to determine and create necessary phase cancelling vibrations over numerous application-specific frequency ranges.

Most recent publications:

Peer Reviewed Journal

 Swallow L M, Luo J K, Siores E, Patel I 2008 A piezoelectric fibre composite based energy harvesting device for potential wearable applications Smart Mater. Struct. 17 7pp

Patent

Siores E and Swallow L 2006 Detection and Suppression of muscle tremors Patent GB0623905.7 Greater Manchester, UK

Conference Papers

Swallow L M, Siores E, Luo J, Dodds D 2007 Comparison of piezoelectric materials for use in energy harvesting applications Knowledge and Innovation Conference, University of Bolton

Swallow L M, Siores E, Dodds D 2007 Self-Powered Vibration Suppression for Medical Devices MEDTEX07, Bolton, UK

Swallow L M, Patel I, Luo J K, Siores 2007 Piezoelectric fibre microcomposite-based energy harvesting device NanoSmart2007, Algarve, Portugal

Poster

Swallow L M, Siores E, Luo J, Dodds D 2007 Self Powered System for Suppression of Parkinson's Tremors Britain's Top Early-Stage Scientists, Engineers and Technologists, House of Commons.