Energy Harvesting and Sensing Performance of Flexible Nanocomposites: Driving towards Self-sustainable devices for Structural Health Monitoring

Energy harvesting (EH) will be one of the key enabling technologies for the Internet of Things (IoT) to realize self-powered sensors. This technique allows for the powering of wireless sensors and low-power electronics in general, exploiting environmentally available energy. The work demonstrates the flexible nanocomposites with enhanced piezoelectric properties due to the beta-phase in the polymeric nanocomposites those required for the sensing applications. The structural and microscopic analyse will be demonstrated to know the crystalline and morphological behaviour of the nanocomposites. The analysis of the electrical output response of the energy harvesting based sensors shows that the electrical performance of nanocomposites increased significantly, with the maximum obtained peak-to-peak output voltage, which is significantly higher than the performance of pure polymer. The electromechanical sensing performance of the nanocomposites were tested at different frequencies under dynamic loading using an electrodynamic shaker is underway to monitor the vibrations generated by the system are detected by the flexible EH sensor connected to the system and correlated with the commercial sensor to meet the real time applications as a pressure sensor and can be widely used in structural health monitoring applications.