Energy Harvesting in a Nonlinear Cantilever Piezoelastic Beam System Excited by Random Vertical Vibrations

The vertical elastic beam with vertical ambient excitation is proposed as an energy harvester. The beam has a tip mass and piezoelectric patches which transduce the bending strains induced by the stochastic force caused by vertical kinematic forcing into electrical charge. We focus on the region with a fairly large amplitude of voltage output where the beam overcomes the potential barrier. Increasing the noise level allows the transition from single well oscillations to inter-well stochastic jumps with more power generation.