Orbit jump in bistable energy harvesters through buckling level modification

Abstract

In the aim of giving an alternative to chemical batteries for energy supply of wireless autonomous devices, the present work focuses on ambient vibration energy harvesting using harvesters taking benefit of energy stored in an oscillating mass subjected to acceleration. More particularly, the attention is put on nonlinear bistable harvesters which offer a wider bandwidth than linear ones. However, due to their nonlinearities, these bistable harvesters exhibit different coexisting behaviors (orbits) on their operating frequency range. Only some of them are interesting for energy harvesting because of their high amplitude of oscillations inducing high energy levels (high orbits). Nevertheless, those high orbits are coexisting with low orbits (i.e., low harvestable energy) on a major portion of their frequency range and thus are not automatically reached. This work hence introduce new strategies to experience orbit jumps from low to high orbits playing with different parameters of the bistable harvester. Preliminary analyses based on energy considerations demonstrates that the most technically achievable strategy, adopted for the experimental analysis, is the orbit jump with fast modifications of its buckling level. More particularly, the bistable harvester is first quickly over-buckled at a particular instant and then quickly released to its initial buckling level when the mass reaches a maximum of displacement (in order to maximize the potential energy brought to the mass). Two elements of this strategy were adjustable: the amplitude of the buckling level variation and the instant at which this change starts. Experimental results show that choosing a good combination of those two elements leads to a high probability to jump from low to high orbits on the whole frequency range concerned by high orbits (from 70% chance to 100% chance to jump). Thanks to this orbit jump technique, the high orbits can be ensured for the considered bistable harvester on a continuous wide frequency range of 50 Hz (from 20 Hz to 70 Hz) on which the mean harvested power varies from 20 µW to 500 µW. Finally, it is shown that the energy consumed to ensure the orbit jump can be recovered within 2 seconds.

Possibilities of Energy Harvesting from the Suspension System of the Internal Combustion Engine in a Vehicle

“…These results were obtained using the random initial condition for velocity and 1 for displacement. Similar diagrams were discussed in [43][44]52]. Note that the sub-harmonic responses with a large voltage output cover a large interval of excitation frequencies.…”

“…In the considered case, the nonlinear bi-stable resonator with a piezoelectric elastic beam is used. The bi-stable system provides broadband frequency transduction [41][42][43][44].…”

Review of nonlinear vibration energy harvesting: Duffing, bistability, parametric, stochastic and others

“…Through varying buckling configurations (Huguet et al, 2019; Leadenham and Erturk, 2014), it is possible to asymmetrically manipulate Duffing oscillators to enter harmonic regions in order to substantially expand the operational frequency of nonlinear resonant bend. However, the precariousness of these high-energy solutions along the bifurcation branch still remains and can be a potential limitation when it comes to practical implementation.…”

“…Dubbed 'broadband resonance', this scheme can deterministically achieve resonant amplification from a broadband vibration irrespective of its excitation frequencies, as long as the average noise intensity is well defined. Huguet et al (2017Huguet et al ( , 2018Huguet et al ( , 2019 studied the harmonic and subharmonic dynamics of bistable oscillators and suggested a broadening of operating frequency compared to pure first harmonic operation. These authors used an actuator to manipulate the buckling level of bistable doubly clamped beams to control orbit jumps across various harmonic and subharmonic regimes.…”

Multiple Solutions of the Tristable Energy Harvester

“…Magnets modify the system's stiffness and lead to a double-well potential. As a result, the resonance area is expanded and additional solutions are obtained [19][20][21][22]. Since multiple resonant frequencies can be excited during machine operation, research was carried performed implementing multiple transducers connected in parallel, each of which was tuned to a different frequency [23].…”