Investigation of vibration energy harvesting using two cantilevers with random input

There is a growing interest to convert ambient mechanical energy to electrical energy by vibration energy harvesters. Realistic vibrations are random and spread over a large frequency range. Most energy harvesters are linear with narrow frequency bandwidth and show low performance, which led to creation of nonlinear harvesters that have larger bandwidth. This article presents a simulation study of a nonlinear energy harvester that contains two cantilever beams coupled by magnetic force. One of the cantilever beam is covered partially by piezoelectric material, while the other beam is normal to the first one and is used to create a variable potential energy function. The variable double-well potential function enables optimum conversion of the kinetic energy and thus larger output. The system is modeled by coupled Duffing oscillator equations. To represent the ambient vibrations, the response to Gaussian random input signal (generated by Shinozuka formula) is studied using power spectral density. The effects of different parameters on the system are also investigated. The results show that the double cantilever harvester has a threshold distance, where the harvester can perform optimally regardless of the excitation level. This observation is opposite to that of the conventional fixed magnet cantilever system where the optimal distance varies with the excitation level. Results of this study can be used to enhance energy efficiency of vibration energy harvesters.