Design, Fabrication, and Test of a Coupled Parametric–Transverse Nonlinearly Broadband Energy Harvester

A coupled parametric–transverse nonlinearly broadband energy harvester utilizing mechanical stoppers has been designed, fabricated, experimentally tested, and in some cases theoretically verified. An energy harvester with coupled parametric and transverse cantilever beams with additional tip-masses was excited using an electrodynamic shaker. A piezoelectric bimorph has been attached to each cantilever beam; when the excitation frequency was in the vicinity of the parametric or transverse resonances, the mechanical strain developed in the piezo-bimorphs was converted into electrical energy across a purely resistive ac load. For the cases involving no stoppers, a weak softening-type nonlinear frequency–voltage behavior was observed for the parametrically excited cantilever beam; however, with the addition of mechanical stoppers, both the transverse and parametrically excited cantilever beams displayed a strong hardening-type nonlinear frequency–voltage behavior. The stoppers substantially increased the operating bandwidth for both the parametric and transversely excited cantilever beams compared to the case without stoppers. For the theoretical investigations, a good agreement for both the fundamental frequencies and frequency–response curves was obtained. It is shown that by coupling transverse and parametric cantilevers with mechanical stoppers, the nonlinear energy harvested by the system takes place over a much broader frequency-bandwidth when compared to the singular transverse cantilever mechanism (by about 163.5%).