Non-linear piezoelectric vibration energy harvesting from a vertical cantilever beam with tip mass

An inverted cantilevered beam vibration energy harvester with a tip mass is evaluated for its electromechanical efficiency and power output capacity in the presence of pure harmonic, pure random and various combinations of harmonic and random base excitation cases. The energy harvester employs a composite piezoelectric material device that is bonded near the root of the beam. The tip mass is used to introduce non-linearity to the system by inducing buckling in some configurations and avoiding it in others. The system dynamics include multiple solutions and jumps between the potential wells, and these are exploited in the harvesting device. This configuration exploits the non-linear properties of the system using base excitation in conjunction with the tip mass at the end of the beam. Such nonlinear device has the potential to work well when the input excitation does not have a dominant harmonic component at a fixed frequency. The paper presents an extensive experimental analysis, results and interesting conclusions derived directly from the experiments supported by numerical simulations.