Experimental verification of a bridge-shaped, nonlinear vibration energy harvester

This paper reports a comprehensive modeling and experimental characterization of a bridge shaped nonlinear energy harvester. A doubly clamped beam at large deflection requires stretching strain in addition to the bending strain to be geometrically compatible, which stiffens the beam as the beam deflects and transforms the dynamics to a nonlinear regime. The Duffing mode non-linear resonance widens the frequency bandwidth significantly at higher frequencies than the linear resonant frequency. The modeling includes a nonlinear measure of strain coupled with piezoelectric constitutive equations which end up in nonlinear coupling terms in the equations of motion. The main result supports that the power generation is bounded by the mechanical damping for both linear and nonlinear harvesters. Modeling also shows the power generation is over a wider bandwidth in the nonlinear case. A prototype is manufactured and tested to measure the power generation at different load resistances and acceleration amplitudes. The prototype shows a nonlinear behavior with well-matched experimental data to the modeling.