A composite beam with dual bistability for enhanced vibration energy harvesting

In this paper a bistable composite cantilever beam comprising asymmetric laminates is studied for vibration energy harvesting applications. An additional magnetic bistability is introduced to the harvesting system to lower the level of excitation that triggers the snap-through for the cantilever from one stable state to another, while retaining the favorable broadband performance. In order to achieve the, the cantilever beam is fitted with a permanent magnet at its tip that is oriented so that there is magnetic repulsion with a stationary magnet. The system performance can be adjusted by varying the separation between the magnets. Experimental results reveal that the use of magnetic bistability enhances broadband performance and improves the output power within a certain level of drive level and magnet separation. The load-deflection characteristic of the bistable beam is experimentally determined, and is subsequently used to model the system by a reduced single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) system having the form of the Duffing equation for a double-well potential system. The dynamics of the beam are investigated using bifurcation diagrams and shows that the qualitative behavior given by the experimentally measured response is predicted well by the simple SDOF model.