A nonlinear piezoelectric energy harvester with magnetic oscillator

This letter proposes a magnetic coupled piezoelectric energy harvester (PEH), in which the magnetic interaction is introduced by a magnetic oscillator. For comparison purpose, lumped parameter models are established for the conventional linear PEH, the nonlinear PEH with a fixed magnet, and the proposed PEH with a magnetic oscillator. Both experiment and simulation show the benefits from the dynamics of the magnetic oscillator. In the experiment, nearly 100% increase in the operating bandwidth and 41% increase in the magnitude of the power output are achieved at an excitation level of 2m/s(2). (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4748794]