A self-powered nonlinear wideband vibration energy harvester with high-energy response stabilization control

Abstract

This paper presents an effort to achieve a nonlinear wideband vibration energy harvester (VEH) with a self-powered stabilization control which is introduced to resolve the well-known problem of the coexisting solutions in the resonance frequency band. The most significant issue on the wideband VEH using a nonlinear oscillator is the difficulty of coexisting solutions, because of which the emergence of the response in the high-energy branch is not guaranteed since it depends on the initial conditions to which steady-state solutions the state is attracted. Thus, a response stabilization control has been proposed by introducing a negative impedance converter (NIC) which returns the harvested energy to the resonator to destabilize the undesirable lower-energy solutions and make the highest-energy solution globally stable. However, the power necessary to operate the control was supplied by an external power source in the previous studies, so that the power consumption by the control circuit is still a critical problem. In this study, the suppression of the power consumption to drive the operational amplifier in the NIC, the power consumed in the switching circuit, and the power to operate the microprocessor has been discussed. A self-powered control circuit has been designed and developed, and it has been demonstrated that it can perform the response stabilization control in a single manner. Successive operation is still a critical problem which requires further understanding of the mutual constraints among design parameters and operation conditions.