Energy Harvesting in Piezoelastic Systems Driven By Random Excitations

The inverted elastic beam is proposed as an energy harvester. The beam has a tip mass and piezoelectric layers which transduce the bending strains induced by the stochastic horizontal displacement into electrical charge. The efficiency of this nonlinear device is analyzed, focusing on the region of stochastic resonance where the beam motion has a large amplitude. Increasing the noise level allows the motion of the beam system to escape from single well oscillations and thus generate more power.