MEMS Vibration Energy Harvesting Devices With Passive Resonance Frequency Adaptation Capability

Abstract

International audienceFurther advancement of ambient mechanical vibration energy harvesting depends on finding a simple yet efficient method of tuning the resonance frequency of the harvester to match the one dominant in the environment. We propose an innovative approach to achieve a completely passive, wideband adaptive system by employing mechanical nonlinear strain stiffening. We present analytical analysis of the underlying idea as well as experimental results obtained with custom fabricated MEMS devices. Nonlinear behavior is obtained through high built-in stresses between layers in these devices. We report experimentally verified frequency adaptability of over 36% for a clamped-clamped beam device at 2 g input acceleration. We believe that the proposed solution is perfectly suited for autonomous industrial machinery surveillance systems, where high amplitude vibrations that are necessary for enabling this solution, are abundant

MEMS Technologies for Energy Harvesting

“…Nonlinearity in the spring stress-strain relationship can generate either a hardening, [30,31], or a softening behavior, [32,33]. In the first case the resonant frequency increases when the oscillation amplitude increases, Fig.…”

“…Therefore, the electrode lengths and shapes are important parameters that affect the output voltage due to the non uniformity of the strain along the beam [88]. Kim et al have fabricated and compared piezoelectric energy harvesters based on d 31 and d 33 modes [89]. These authors have demonstrated that the output power of the d 33 mode depends strongly on the dimensions of IDE.…”

Strategies for Wideband Mechanical Energy Harvester

“…Marzencki et al, [11] has proposed an energy harvesting device employing the mechanical non linear strain stiffness using a clamped-clamped beam. For such systems the stiffness depends on the amplitude and the frequency of the vibration source.…”

Wideband Electromagnetic Energy Harvesting from a Rotating Wheel

“…The other method of ensuring that the energy harvester has a self-tuning resonance frequency capability to match the base motion frequency is integrating the harvester with an accelerometer, a displacement sensor, and an actuator to tune the stiffness of the harvester based on the base vibration frequency (Leland & Wright, 2006). Passive frequency-adjusting energy-harvesting mechanisms have grown in use over the past few years (Daminakis et al, 2005;Gu & Livermore, 2010;Lee et al, 2007;Mansour et al, 2010;Marzencki et al, 2009). (Youngsman et al, 2005) presented a model for a frequency-adjustable vibration energy harvester.…”