A Curve-Shaped Beam Bistable Piezoelectric Energy Harvester with Variable Potential Well: Modeling and Numerical Simulation

Abstract

To improve the energy harvesting performance of an energy harvester, a novel bistable piezoelectric energy harvester with variable potential well (BPEH-V) is proposed by introducing a spring to the external magnet from a curve-shaped beam bistable harvester (CBH-C). First, finite element simulation was performed in COMSOL software to validate that the curved beam configuration was superior to the straight beam in power generation performance, which benefits energy harvesting. Moreover, the nonlinear magnetic model was obtained by using the magnetic dipoles method, and the nonlinear restoring force model of the curve-shaped beam was acquired based on fitting the experimental data. The corresponding coupled governing equations were derived by using generalized Hamilton’s principle, the dynamic responses were obtained by solving the coupling equations with the ode45 method. Finally, the numerical simulations showed that the proposed harvester can make interwell oscillations easier due to the spring being efficiently introduced to pull down the potential barrier compared with the conventional bistable harvester. Spring stiffness has a great impact on characteristics of the system, and a suitable stiffness contributes to realize large-amplitude interwell oscillations over a wide range of excitation, especially in the low excitation condition.

A general electroelastic analysis of piezoelectric shells based on levy-type solution and eigenvalue-eigenvector method

“…Accuracy of the proposed theory was justified through comparison with finite element results. Chen et al [ 22 ] proposed an intelligent bistable energy harvester exposed to variable potential using a spring attached to the external magnet of a curved beam based on finite element method using COMSOL package. Magnetic dipoles method was used for nonlinear magnetic modeling.…”

Diamagnetic-levitation-based Electromagnetic Energy Harvester for Ultralow-frequency Vibrations and Human Motions

“…Therefore, harvesting vibration energy from the ambient environment is an ideal solution for a sustainable power supply. (3) Currently, vibration energy harvesting mainly makes use of three common mechanisms: piezoelectric, (4,5) electrostatic, (6,7) and electromagnetic. (8,9) Electromagnetic vibration energy harvesters (EVEHs) have attracted extensive attention from researchers owing to their high output current, low internal resistance, and simple structure.…”

Fractal Patterns in the Parameter Space of Bi-stable Duffing Oscillator

“…The dissipative bi-stable Duffing oscillator is a well-known dynamical system with applications in many fields, such as shape morphing [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10], energy harvesting [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18], soft robotics [19][20][21], MEMS devices [22][23][24][25][26][27], energy absorption [28][29][30], and drug delivery [31]. In addition, with recent advances in the multi-stable metamaterial [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44], and advanced functional systems [45][46][47][48], bi-stable system dynamics can be introduced as a mechanism for folding …”