Internal Resonance Energy Harvesting

Abstract

Internal resonance is explored as a possible mechanism to enhance vibration-based energy harvesting. An electromagnetic device with snap-through nonlinearity is proposed as an archetype of an internal resonance energy harvester. Based on the equations governing the vibration measured from a stable equilibrium position, the method of multiple scales is applied to derive the amplitude–frequency response relationships of the displacement and the power in the first primary resonances with the two-to-one internal resonance. The amplitude–frequency response curves have two peaks bending to the left and the right, respectively. The numerical simulations support the analytical results. Then the averaged power is calculated under the Gaussian white noise, the narrow-band noise, the colored noise defined by a second-order filter, and the exponentially correlated noise. The results demonstrate numerically that the internal resonance design produces more power than other designs under the Gaussian white noise and the exponentially correlated noise. Besides, the internal resonance energy harvester can outperform the linear energy harvesters with the same natural frequencies and in the same size under Gaussian white noise.