Owing to the increasing demand for harvesting energy from environmental vibration for use in self-powered electronic applications, cantilever-based vibration energy harvesting has attracted considerable interest from various parties and has become one of the most common approaches to converting redundant mechanical energy into electrical energy. As the output voltage produced from a piezoelectric material depends largely on the geometric shape and the size of the beam, there is a need to model and compare the performance of cantilever beams of differing geometries. This paper presents the study of strain distribution in various shapes of cantilever beams, including a convex and concave edge profile elliptical beam that have not yet been discussed in any prior literature. Both analytical and finite-element models are derived and the resultant strain distributions in the beam are computed based on a MATLAB solver and ANSYS finite-element analysis tools. An optimum geometry for a vibration-based energy harvesting system is verified. Finally, experimental results comparing the power density for triangular and rectangular piezoelectric beams are also presented to validate the findings of the study, and the claim, as suggested in the literature, is verified. © 2016, The Chinese Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics; Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.