Multistable Structures for Broad Bandwidth Vibration-based Energy Harvesters: An Analytical Design Investigation

The field of vibrational energy harvesting aims to transform ambient mechanical energy into electrical energy. Robust energy harvesters that allow to harvest sufficient energy over a broad frequency range are crucial for possible applications. One strategy to increase the bandwidth of energy harvesters and, thus, the robustness is the exploitation of multistable structures. This is due to their feature of showing large amplitude oscillations that result from snap-through actions (inter-well oscillations) in a significant frequency range.
In this thesis different multistable energy harvester designs are analyzed in order to optimize their performance and formulate design criteria. Based on analytical investigations, design criteria are formulated to describe the favorable harvesting domain. Numerical simulations are performed to supplement the analytical investigations. The differences of the considered structures are highlighted concerning robust and efficient harvesting by means of numerical simulations for different types of excitation.
Experiments are carried out to complement the analytical and numerical analysis. The experiments establish the transferability of the numerical and analytical findings to real-world applications.