Harvesting both wind energy and vibration energy by a zigzag structure with hybrid magnetic and piezoelectric effects

In practical environments, wind energy and vibration energy often coexist. Considering this, we introduce a new energy harvester designed to concurrently harness wind energy and vibration energy by integrating magnetic and piezoelectric effects. This harvester is composed of a zigzag structure and a bluff body. The bluff body is designed to execute galloping under incoming fluid flow and produce outputs, while the zigzag bi-stable structure can harness the energy of base excitation effectively. The introduction of magnetic interaction leads to the softening-spring characteristic, which is verified by the nonlinear analysis. This softening-spring nonlinearity can enhance the working frequency range of the harvester. The results obtained from the numerical simulations indicate that the interaction of base excitation and wind flow can significantly improve the non-resonance region output. Corresponding validation experiments are carried out. The results are in good agreement with the numerical ones. Under stochastic excitations, the output power obtained from the hybrid scenario can reach 73.04 μW, representing a 16 % increase compared to the pure base excitation scenario.