A piezo-pneumatic vibration isolator (PPVI) is presented for energy harvesting of low-frequency/high level vibration and self-powered active vibration control based on energy harvesting. The structure and working principle of the PPVI are introduced, and the energy harvesting performance is studied theoretically and experimentally. With the established energy-conversion model, the influence factors of the PPVI are picked up and analyzed. The theoretic results show that the output performance of the PPVI depends on the vibration frequency/level, structural size of the piezodisc/cylinder, and gas volume as well as backpressure. Under other constant parameters, the generated energy exponentially increases with the rising backpressure, and there are optimal thickness of piezodisc and the thickness ratio of substrate thickness to total thickness, for achieving the peak energy of the PPVI. With piezodisc measured of Ф60×0.9mm 3 and cylinder measured of Ф16×100mm3, a PPVI is fabricated and tested at different frequency/backpressure/vibration levels. The results suggest that, under the given test condition, the output voltage from PPVI increases linearly with the rising backpressure/vibration levels, and the output voltage at backpressure of 0.4 MPa is 5 times than that without backpressure. Further, there is an optimal vibration frequency (5 Hz) for the PPVI to achieve maximal voltage.