Experiment Investigation of Bistable Vibration Energy Harvesting with Random Wave Environment

Qiong Wu,Hairui Zhang,Wei Zhao,Jie Lian,Shijie Zhou,Xilu Zhao

doi:10.3390/app11093868

Qiong Wu, Hairui Zhang + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/app11093868

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Abstract

The energy harvested from the renewable energy has been attracting a great potential as a source of electricity for many years; however, several challenges still exist limiting output performance, such as the package and low frequency of the wave. Here, this paper proposed a bistable vibration system for harvesting low-frequency renewable energy, the bistable vibration model consisting of an inverted cantilever beam with a mass block at the tip in a random wave environment and also develop a vibration energy harvesting system with a piezoelectric element attached to the surface of a cantilever beam. The experiment was carried out by simulating the random wave environment using the experimental equipment. The experiment result showed a mass block’s response vibration was indeed changed from a single stable vibration to a bistable oscillation when a random wave signal and a periodic signal were co-excited. It was shown that stochastic resonance phenomena can be activated reliably using the proposed bistable motion system, and, correspondingly, large-scale bistable responses can be generated to realize effective amplitude enlargement after input signals are received. Furthermore, as an important design factor, the influence of periodic excitation signals on the large-scale bistable motion activity was carefully discussed, and a solid foundation was laid for further practical energy harvesting applications.

Highlights

In the past, the research and development of renewable energy sources and other resource utilization is a very important research topic
We propose a bistable vibration model consisting of an inverted cantilever beam with a mass block at the tip in a random wave environment and develop a vibration energy harvesting system with a piezoelectric element attached to the surface of a cantilever beam
In order to evaluate the amplification effect expressed by the ratio of the output and the input of the vibration system, the amplification effect of the proposed bistable vibration model is evaluated using the ratio of the standard deviation of the response displacement of the mass block and the support point calculated in the following equation

Summary

Introduction

The research and development of renewable energy sources and other resource utilization is a very important research topic. Many researchers have studied the vibration power generation method in the natural environment and published many research results [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Among them, applying the stochastic resonance phenomenon as a possible way to utilize the rich energy contained in complex random waves effectively has attracted much attention. Theoretical research on stochastic resonance has been carried out, and many research results have been published [8,9,10,11]. Stochastic resonance is applied to many new fields, and, in the field of measurement signal processing, the system that detects the weak input signal by using the noise resonance phenomenon by adding noise signal to measure the weak input signal is studied [12,13,14,15]. In the field of computer image processing, it is possible to process the dark image relatively by using the stochastic resonance system as an image sensor of the image to clear the dark image [16,17,18,19]

Results

Discussion

Conclusion