A single-magnet nonlinear piezoelectric converter for enhanced energy harvesting from random vibrations

Power harvesters from mechanical vibrations are commonly linear mechanical resonators that are most effective when excited at resonance. Differently, under wideband vibrations, linear converters are suboptimal. A nonlinear converter is here proposed that implements nonlinearity and bistability by employing a single external magnet, in order to improve conversion effectiveness while simplifying device fabrication. The converter is composed of a piezoelectric bimorph on a ferromagnetic cantilever. The fabrication technology is based on the screen printing of a PZT low-curing-temperature paste on harmonic steel substrate. The ferromagnetic cantilever converter, under proper coupling with the external magnet, bounces between two stable states when excited by random vibrations and generates an electric output via the piezoelectric effect. According to theoretical predictions, when bistable behaviour is present, experimental results demonstrate an improvement of about 400% of the rms voltage generated by the converter with respect to the linear case. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.