Energy harvesting from impulsive loads using intentional essential nonlinearities

Energy harvesting devices designed with intentional nonlinearities offer the possibility of increased performance under broadband excitations and realistic environmental conditions. This work considers an energy harvesting system based on the response of an attachment with strong nonlinear behavior. The electromechanical coupling is achieved with a piezoelectric element across a resistive load. When the system is subject to harmonic excitation, the harvested power from the nonlinear system exhibits a wider interval of frequencies over which the harvested power is significant, although an equivalent linear device offers greater efficiency at its design frequency. However, for impulsive excitation, the performance of the nonlinear harvesting system exceeds the corresponding linear system in terms of both magnitude of power harvested and the frequency interval over which significant power can be drawn from the mechanical vibrations.