Recently, nonlinearities have been shown to play an important role in increasing the extracted energy of vibration-based energy harvesting systems. In this paper, we study the dynamical behavior of a piecewise linear (PWL) spring-mass-damper system for vibration-based energy harvesting applications. First, we present a continuous time single degree of freedom PWL dynamical model of the system. ...

Harvesting energy from ambient vibration is proposed as an alternative to storage based power supplies for autonomous systems. The system presented converts the mechanical energy of a vibration into electrical energy by means of a variable capacitor, which is polarized by an electret. A lumped element model is used to study the generator and design a prototype. The device has been micromachined...

Harvesting energy from ambient vibration is proposed as an alternative to storage based power supplies for autonomous systems. The system presented converts the mechanical energy of a vibration into electrical energy by means of a variable capacitor, which is polarized by an electret. A lumped element model is used to study the generator and design a prototype. The device has been micromachined...

abstract: the main aim of the vibration energy harvesters is to locally power autonomous devices such as wireless sensors. generally, power levels are low and the environmental benefit of the technology is to replace batteries rather than saving energy per se. piezoelectric vibrational energy harvesters are usually inertial mass based devices, where a cantilever beam with a piezoelectric outer ...

The process of acquiring the energy surrounding a system and converting it into usable electrical energy is termed power harvesting. In the last few years, there has been a surge of research in the area of power harvesting. This increase in research has been brought on by the modern advances in wireless technology and low-power electronics such as microelectromechanical systems. The advances ha...

Vibration-based energy harvesting seeks to convert ambient vibrations to electrical energy and is of interest for, among other applications, powering the individual nodes of wireless sensor networks. Generally it is desired to match the resonant frequencies of the device to the ambient vibration source to optimize the energy harvested. This paper presents a two-dimensionally (2D) tunable vibrat...

The inefficiency in converting low frequency vibration (6∼240Hz) to electrical energy remains a key issue for miniaturized vibration energy harvesting devices. To address this subject, this paper reports on the novel, three-dimensional micro-fabrication of spring elements within such devices, in order to achieve resonances and maximum energy conversion within these common frequencies. The proce...