Diankun Pan

By Fuhong Dai and Diankun Pan

Energy harvesting employing nonlinear systems offers considerable advantages comparing to linear systems in the field of broadband energy harvesting. Bi-stable piezoelectric energy harvesters have been proved to be a good candidate for broadband frequency harvesting due to their highly geometrically nonlinear response during vibrations. These bi-stable energy harvesters consist of bi-stable structure and piezoelectric transducers. The nonlinear response depends on the host bi-stable structure. A possible category of bi-stable structures is bi-stable composite laminate, which has two stable equilibrium states resulting from the mismatch in thermal expansion coefficients between plies. It has received considerable interest in deformable structure since the “snap-through” between two stable states results in a significant deformation without continuous energy supply. Combining piezoelectric transducer and the bi-stable composite laminate is a feasible method to obtain bi-stable energy harvester. Piezoelectric energy harvesters based on bi-stable composite laminate have been shown to exhibit high levels of power output over a wide range of frequencies. This chapter aims to summarize and review the various approaches in piezoelectric energy harvesting based on bi-stable composite laminates.

Part of the book: Energy Harvesting