2,378 research outputs found
Enhanced vibrational energy harvesting using non-linear stochastic resonance
Stochastic resonance has seen wide application in the physical sciences as a tool to understand weak signal amplification by noise. However, this apparently counter- intuitive phenomenon does not appear to have been exploited as a tool to enhance vibrational energy harvesting. In this note we demonstrate that by adding a periodic excitation to a damped energy harvesting mechanism, the power available from the device is apparently enhanced over a conventional unexcited mechanism. A simple model of such a device is proposed and investigated to explore the use of stochastic resonance to enhance vibrational energy harvesting
Motional effects on the efficiency of excitation transfer
Energy transfer plays a vital role in many natural and technological
processes. In this work, we study the effects of mechanical motion on the
excitation transfer through a chain of interacting molecules with application
to biological scenarios of transfer processes. Our investigation demonstrates
that, for various types of mechanical oscillations, the transfer efficiency is
significantly enhanced over that of comparable static configurations. This
enhancement is a genuine quantum signature, and requires the collaborative
interplay between the quantum-coherent evolution of the excitation and the
mechanical motion of the molecules; it has no analogue in the classical
incoherent energy transfer. This effect may not only occur naturally, but it
could be exploited in artificially designed systems to optimize transport
processes. As an application, we discuss a simple and hence robust control
technique.Comment: 25 pages, 11 figures; completely revised; version accepted for
publicatio
A Circuit Theory Perspective on the Modeling and Analysis of Vibration Energy Harvesting Systems: A Review
This paper reviews advanced modeling and analysis techniques useful in the description, design, and optimization of mechanical energy harvesting systems based on the collection of energy from vibration sources. The added value of the present contribution is to demonstrate the benefits of the exploitation of advanced techniques, most often inherited from other fields of physics and engineering, to improve the performance of such systems. The review is focused on the modeling techniques that apply to the entire energy source/mechanical oscillator/transducer/electrical load chain, describing mechanical–electrical analogies to represent the collective behavior as the cascade of equivalent electrical two-ports, introducing matching networks enhancing the energy transfer to the load, and discussing the main numerical techniques in the frequency and time domains that can be used to analyze linear and nonlinear harvesters, both in the case of deterministic and stochastic excitations
Stochastic analysis of a bistable piezoelectric energy harvester with a matched electrical load
We present the analysis of a bistable piezoelectric energy harvester with matched electrical load, subject to random mechanical vibrations. The matching network optimizes the average energy transfer to the electrical load. The system is described by a set of nonlinear stochastic differential equations. A perturbation method is used to find an approximate solution of the stochastic system in the weak noise limit, and this solution is used to optimize the circuit parameters of the matching network. In the strong noise limit, the state equations are integrated numerically to determine the average power absorbed by the load and the power efficiency. Our analysis shows that the application of a properly designed matching network improves the performances by a significant amount, as the power delivered to the load improves of a factor about 17 with respect to a direct connection
Vibration-enhanced quantum transport
In this paper, we study the role of collective vibrational motion in the
phenomenon of electronic energy transfer (EET) along a chain of coupled
electronic dipoles with varying excitation frequencies. Previous experimental
work on EET in conjugated polymer samples has suggested that the common
structural framework of the macromolecule introduces correlations in the energy
gap fluctuations which cause coherent EET. Inspired by these results, we
present a simple model in which a driven nanomechanical resonator mode
modulates the excitation energy of coupled quantum dots and find that this can
indeed lead to an enhancement in the transport of excitations across the
quantum network. Disorder of the on-site energies is a key requirement for this
to occur. We also show that in this solid state system phase information is
partially retained in the transfer process, as experimentally demonstrated in
conjugated polymer samples. Consequently, this mechanism of vibration enhanced
quantum transport might find applications in quantum information transfer of
qubit states or entanglement.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, new material, included references, final
published versio
Applicability of magnetic force models for multi-stable energy harvesters
Multi-stable piezoelectric energy harvesters have been exploited to enhance performance for extracting ambient vibrational energy from a broadband energy source. Since magnetic force plays a significant role in enhancing the dynamic behavior of harvesters, it is necessary to model and understand the significant influencing of structural parameters on magnetic force. Recently, several theoretical modeling methods, including magnetic dipole, improved dipole, magnetic current, and magnetic charge models, have been developed to calculate the magnetic force in multi-stable energy harvesters. However, the influence of structural parameters and magnet dimensions on the accuracy of magnetic force calculation for these methods has not been analyzed. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the applicability of these methods under a range of operating conditions. New insights into the accuracy and application constraints of these methods are presented in this paper to calculate the impact of magnetic force on multi-stable energy harvesters. From the theoretical derivation of models and numerical results obtained, a quantitative assessment of errors under different structural parameters and magnet sizes is presented and compared to evaluate the application constraints. Moreover, experimental measurements are performed to verify the applicability of these modeling methods for bi-stable and tri-stable energy harvesters with different structural parameters.</p
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