Effect of potential shape and excitation spectrum on power harvested from ambient vibration

Abstract

In recent years, there have been experimental developments in energy harvesting from ambient vibrations in small-scale sensing. The ultimate goal is to replace batteries in these sensors. Linear systems have a narrow bandwidth, but ambient vibrations occur over a potentially broad range of frequencies. Nonlinear systems-in particular, bistable systems have a wide bandwidth. The objective of this thesis is to understand the dependence of power harvested on the shape of the potential-in the transition from linear to bistable. A single degree-of-freedom mathematical model was developed and simulated in MATLAB over varying operating conditions and potential function parameters. The findings from this thesis support experimental results that nonlinearity improves the amount of power that is harvested.