Simulation of an Electrostatic Energy Harvester at Large Amplitude Narrow and Wide Band Vibrations

TL;DR

This paper models and simulates an electrostatic energy harvester under large amplitude vibrations, analyzing linear and nonlinear behaviors, including the effects of mechanical stoppers on power output for narrow and wide band excitations.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive simulation of an electrostatic energy harvester with nonlinear effects and mechanical stoppers under various vibration conditions.

Findings

Nonlinear effects become significant at large displacements.

Mechanical stoppers cause output power to flatten at large amplitudes.

Output power scales linearly then sublinearly with input spectral density.

Abstract

An electrostatic in-plane overlap varying energy harvester is modeled and simulated using a circuit simulator. Both linear and nonlinear models are investigated. The nonlinear model includes mechanical stoppers at the displacement extremes. Large amplitude excitation signals, both narrow and wide band, are used to emulate environmental vibrations. Nonlinear behavior is significant at large displacement due to the impact on mechanical stoppers. For a sinusoidal excitation the mechanical stoppers cause the output power to flatten and weakly decrease. For a wide band excitation, the output power first increases linearly with the power spectral density of the input signal, then grows slower than linearly.