A Miniature Coupled Bistable Vibration Energy Harvester

14th International Conference on Micro and Nanotechnology for Power Generation and Energy Conversion Applications

物理学;能源学

Zhu, D.^1 ; Arthur, D.C.^1 ; Beeby, S.P.^1

Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton

SO171BJ, United Kingdom^1

关键词: Bistable structures;    Design and tests;    Energy Harvester;    Maximum output power;    Nonlinear structure;    Vibration amplitude;    Vibration energy harvesters;    Vibration energy harvesting;   

Others  :  https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/557/1/012116/pdf
DOI  :  10.1088/1742-6596/557/1/012116

来源: IOP

【 摘 要 】

This paper reports the design and test of a miniature coupled bistable vibration energy harvester. Operation of a bistable structure largely depends on vibration amplitude rather than frequency, which makes it very promising for wideband vibration energy harvesting applications. A coupled bistable structure consists of a pair of mobile magnets that create two potential wells and thus the bistable phenomenon. It requires lower excitation to trigger bistable operation compared to conventional bistable structures. Based on previous research, this work focused on miniaturisation of the coupled bistable structure for energy harvesting application. The proposed bistable energy harvester is a combination of a Duffing's nonlinear structure and a linear assisting resonator. Experimental results show that the output spectrum of the miniature coupled bistable vibration energy harvester was the superposition of several spectra. It had a higher maximum output power and a much greater bandwidth compared to simply the Duffing's structure without the assisting resonator.