Simultaneous passive suppression and energy harvesting from galloping using a bistable piezoelectric nonlinear energy sink

The paper brings analytical-numerical studies on the problem of simultaneous passive suppression of the galloping of a square prism and energy harvesting. For this, a device named bistable piezoelectric nonlinear energy sink (BSPNES), defined as a small mass linked to the main structure by a piezoelectric pre-compressed spring and a linear dashpot, is employed. The focus is the comparison of the BSPNES performance with that obtained from its monostable counterpart. The numerical results show that the BSPNES performs better than its monostable counterpart for practically the whole range of reduced velocities. More specifically, for a certain range of reduced velocities, both the suppression efficiency and the harvested energy achieved by the BSPNES are significantly larger than those from its monostable counterpart. Besides the numerical results, a perturbation method, proper for strong nonlinearities, is applied. The results from this perturbation method very well agree with those from the numerical integration of the mathematical model.