Experimental and theoretical investigation of a nonlinear vibrational energy harvester

It has been demonstrated that, under the proper conditions, nonlinear configurations can provide better performance, compared to linear resonant oscillators, in terms of the amount of energy extracted from environmental wide spectrum mechanical vibrations. Recently, the authors presented the results of investigations on a system for energy harvesting from wideband vibrations, using a nonlinear snap-through-buckling (STB) configuration and two piezoelectric transducers. The device was shown to be capable of providing sufficient electrical energy to power an RF transmitter. However, in order to optimize the system, an analytical model is necessary. In this paper, a comparison between two different theoretical models for the STB beam is discussed. In addition, preliminary simulations demonstrating the possibility of exploiting the stochastic resonance phenomenon (SR) to improve the performances of the harvester are reported. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.