Increasing the bandwidth of the vibration energy harvesters is one of the research emphases to maximize the energy harvested from the ambient. Here we design a Two-Degree of Freedom Vibro-impact Triboelectric energy harvester with a double-impact configuration, which combines multi-modality and piecewise linearity to improve the harvesting bandwidth of triboelectric energy harvesters. The harvester structure consists of primary and secondary cantilever beams with two integrated energy harvesters. The two beams are designed to operate at close natural frequencies, and under the effect of the impact, triboelectricity is generated, and the bandwidths of the resonators are combined to create a wide bandwidth. The double impact system is investigated numerically to examine the structure’s dynamic behavior at different excitation levels, separation distance, and surface charge density to extract an optimal parameter for achieving a wide combined bandwidth. The system demonstrates the capability of connecting multi-modality and piecewise linearity to significantly broaden the triboelectric energy harvester’s bandwidth.
The efficiency of the energy harvesters can be improved by increasing the harvester bandwidth. Towards this, we presented a Two-Degree of Freedom (2-DOF) Vibro-impact Triboelectric Energy Harvester by combining multi-modality and piecewise linearity of two close resonant frequencies. The harvester structure consists of a primary cantilever beam attached to a secondary cantilever beam through a tip mass. The secondary beam is attached in the opposite direction to the primary beam. The bottom surface of the secondary beam acts as an upper electrode of a triboelectric generator. A lower electrode with bonded Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) insulator is attached at some gap separation distance underneath the upper electrode to create an impact structure. When the system vibrates, an impact between the triboelectric layers generates an alternating electrical signal. A 2-DOF system with lumped parameter theoretical model was developed to extract the governing equations. The structure’s dynamic behavior at different excitation levels, separation distance, and surface charge density were investigated theoretically. As a result, we achieved a wider bandwidth for the designed energy harvester. The proposed harvester demonstrated an increase in the maximum output voltage by more than 300 percent, and 250 percent increase in the bandwidth, by changing the excitation level from 0.1g to 0.7g. The result of this study can pave the way for an efficient energy harvester that can scavenge ambient vibrations over a wide range of excitation frequencies.
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