Project Description

Vibration-energy harvesting from the ambient has become a hot research topic in the past few years due to the recent dramatic increase in the use of wireless sensor networks and electronics. A variety of energy harvesting methods have been proposed to generate electrical energy from ambient vibrations. This includes electrostatic generation, electromagnetic induction, and piezoelectricity. Linear harvesters are designed so as to extract energy near resonance where the amplitude reaches its peak. However, away from resonance, the extracted power diminishes, which limits the application of these linear systems. For broadband-frequency harvesting, nonlinear systems have been proposed and experimental tests have shown promising results.