Harvesting energy from ambient mechanical vibrations by the piezoelectric effect has been proposed for powering microelectromechanical systems and replacing batteries that have a finite life span. A conventional piezoelectric energy harvester (PEH) is usually designed as a linear resonator, and suffers from a narrow operating bandwidth. To achieve broadband energy harvesting, in this paper we introduce a concept and describe the realization of a novel nonlinear PEH. The proposed PEH consists of a primary piezoelectric cantilever beam coupled to an auxiliary piezoelectric cantilever beam through two movable magnets. For predicting the nonlinear response from the proposed PEH, lumped parameter models are established for the two beams. Both simulation and experiment reveal that for the primary beam, the introduction of magnetic coupling can expand the operating bandwidth as well as improve the output voltage. For the auxiliary beam, the magnitude of the output voltage is slightly reduced, but additional output is observed at off-resonance frequencies. Therefore, broadband energy harvesting can be obtained from both the primary beam and the auxiliary beam.
Based on the EAM potential, a molecular dynamics study on the tensile properties of ultrathin nickel nanowires in the (100〉 orientation with diameters of 3.94, 4.95 and 5.99 nm was presented at different temperatures and strain rates. The temperature and strain rate dependences of tensile properties were investigated. The simulation results show that the elastic modulus and the yield strength are gradually decreasing with the increase of temperature, while with the increase of the strain rate, the stress--strain curves fluctuate more intensely and the ultrathin nickel nanowires rupture at one smaller and smaller strain. At an ideal temperature of 0.01 K, the yield strength of the nanowires drops rapidly with the increase of strain rate, and at other temperatures the strain rate has a little influence on the elastic modulus and the yield strength. Finally, the effects of size on the tensile properties of ultrathin nickel nanowires were briefly discussed.
Under an in-phase assumption, the complete charging for an energy harvesting system is studied, which consists of a piezoelectric energy harvester(PEH), a bridge rectifier, a filter capacitor, a switch, a controller and a rechargeable battery. For the transient charging, the results indicate that the voltage across the filter capacitor increases as the charging proceeds, which is consistent with that reported in the literature. However, a new finding shows that the charging rate and energy harvesting efficiency decrease over time after their respective peak values are acquired.For the steady-state charging, the results reveal that the energy harvesting efficiency can be adjusted by altering the critical charging voltage that controls the transition of the system. The optimal energy harvesting efficiency is limited by the optimal efficiency of the transient charging. Finally, the relationship between the critical charging voltage and the equivalent resistance of the controller and rechargeable battery is established explicitly.