Technical Papers and Presentations

Piezo buzzers, made of piezoelectric material glued on a brass plate, are usually used as signaler, but the buzzer can also be used to convert mechanical into electrical energy. If acceleration influences the buzzer, the structure is bent by its mass and a voltage can be measured between the connection pads. With a small, additional weight on the buzzer the useable electrical energy becomes powerful enough to drive a small microprocessor to calculate the acceleration and store its value. Without modifying a normal buzzer, only acceleration perpendicular to the buzzer influences the voltage. The main question of this study is: How to optimize the structure to measure acceleration in any possible directions by using only a single buzzer? To answer the question, simulations were used to see how voltages arise when the buzzer is bent into any possible direction.