Enhanced vibrational energy harvesting using non-linear stochastic resonance

Abstract

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