A tunable multi-stable piezoelectric vibration energy harvester

Abstract

The vibration energy harvester is intended to convert ambient environmental energy into electrical energy. It has great potential to be an alternative to the conventional battery in low-power electric devices. A traditional vibrating energy harvester consists of a linear oscillator that operates in a narrow frequency band. Nonlinear energy harvesters provide a promising solution to widen the operating bandwidth. Based on the system stability states, the nonlinear vibration energy harvesters can be classified as mono-stable and multi-stable. In this study, a tunable multi-stable piezoelectric energy harvester is proposed. The apparatus can be manually tuned to achieve three states, namely tri-stable, bi-stable, and mono-stable. It has a compact structure compared to the existing designs. [...]