Performance and dynamics of a novel bistable vibration energy harvester with appended nonlinear elastic boundary

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel bistable energy harvester coupled with a nonlinear elastic boundary (BEH-NB) to enhance energy harvesting performance. The analytical model of BEH-NB is derived and verified experimentally. Then the performance of the bistable energy harvester with different boundary conditions is investigated, including the bistable energy harvester with linear elastic boundary (BEH-LB), the bistable energy harvester without elastic boundary (BEH), and a linear energy harvester (LEH). The compared results show that the performance of BEH-NB is better than that of its counterparts. Results of the studied case show that the average power of BEH-NB can be improved by 42.05%, and the operational bandwidth is significantly widened by 93.18%, which is highly beneficial for energy harvesting. To identify the optimal parameters set for energy harvesting from ambient excitation, bifurcation analyses are performed. It is found that small changes in parameters can profoundly alter the system’s steady-state response. The initial conditions also have a significant effect on the type of the system’s response. Therefore, the basin of attraction of BEH-NB is calculated to reveal the influence of the initial conditions and to quantify the occurrence probability of the different types of motion. The results of this paper provide a novel perspective in the structural design of the system and offer a practical application design guidelines to improve the system’s performance.