Influence of Multiple Potential Wells, Excitation Intensities and Electro-Mechanical Parameters on Vibratory Energy Harvesting from Nonlinear Oscillators

Numerical investigation of multi-stable vibrational energy harvesting under Gaussian white noise excitation is presented by solution of the corresponding Fokker-Planck (FP) equation. The effects of the system parameters, potential well function and noise intensity on the mean square voltage are studied. Under random excitation, for lower intensity of noise the energy harvester with single potential well outperforms the harvester with multiple deep potential wells. Beyond a threshold value of noise intensity, energy harvester with multiple well potentials outperforms as the jump from one potential well to another becomes more frequent with inter-well dynamics functioning. It is observed that the energy harvested can be optimized by suitable choice of the potential function, coupling parameters and the noise intensity.