Experimental verificatio of load resistance switching for global stabilization of high-energy response of a nonlinear wideband electromagnetic vibration energy harvester

Abstract

This paper presents an experimental verification of a self-excitation control of a resonance- type vibration energy harvester with a Duffing-type nonlinearity which is designed to perform effectively in a wide frequency range. For the conventional linear vibration energy harvester, the performance of the power generation at the resonance frequency and the bandwidth of the resonance peak are trade-off. The resonance frequency band can be expanded by introducing a Duffing-type nonlinear oscillator in order to enable the harvester to generate larger electric power in a wider frequency range. However, since such nonlinear oscillator can have multiple stable steady-state solutions in the resonance band, it is difficult for the nonlinear harvester to maintain the high performance of the power generation constantly. The principle of self-excitation and entrainment has been utilized to provide the global stability to the highest-energy solution by destabilizing other unexpected lower-energy solutions by introducing a switching circuit of the load resistance between positive and the negative values depending on the response amplitude of the oscillator. It has been experimentally validated that this control law imparts the self-excitation capability to the oscillator to show an entrainment into the highest-energy solution.