Parametric analysis for optimized piezoelectric bistable vibration energy harvesters

This study focuses on vibration energy harvesting with piezoelectric bistable inertial generators in order to provide an alternative or a support to chemical batteries in the power supply of isolated wireless sensors (leading to a better autonomy of these devices). The objective of the present work is to provide guidelines to optimize this kind of generator through the investigation of the influence of different parameters (load resistance, mass, stiffness, buckling level) on its frequency response. These guidelines will be obtained exploiting a new analytical model for piezoelectric bistable harvesters which will be constructed based on a recent model introduced for electromagnetic bistable harvesters. This model includes the study of subharmonic behaviors which can be used to enhance the global bandwidth of the harvester as well as a stability robustness criterion which allows a better prediction of experimental observations. The new model will be validated by experimental data and finally exploited to provide guidelines for piezoelectric bistable harvester optimization. (paper)