Energy Harvesting from Nonlinear Vibrating System Using Two Impacting Cantilever Beam

This paper aims at investigating the mechanical behavior of a nonlinear system consisting of two coupled beams and a PZT material attached on each beam, excited with a single resonant frequency, for energy harvesting. In order to model the beams, in-extensional assumption and Euler-Bernoulli beam theory are utilized. It is assumed that the beams undergo large amplitude vibrations; which necessitates the application of a nonlinear theory which is taking into account curvature-related and inertial-related nonlinearities. Numerical studies were carried out to study the effect of the different parameters such as external resistance load, gap distance between beams on the nonlinear behavior of the system. It was obtained that as the gap distance between beams decreases, the scavenged power increases and the system behavior tends to exhibit non-periodic response. In addition, a comparison was done between linear and nonlinear systems shown that considering nonlinearity in the system accompanies a shift in the resonance frequency and induces hardening nonlinear behavior in the system.