Vortex-induced vibrational tristable energy harvester: Design and experiments

Wind energy harvesters have been widely studied for their great application potential to power small wireless sensors. Meanwhile, the unique dynamic characteristics of vibrational tristable energy harvesters have been theoretically and experimentally verified. More importantly, such vibrational tristable energy harvesters have excellent broadband energy harvesting performance under low-frequency and low-level excitations. This paper aims to develop a new kind of aeroelastic energy harvesters for enhancing wind energy harvesting performance. In detail, a vortex-induced vibrational tristable energy harvester is designed by using the magnetic force to realize the tristable configuration. A mathematical model of the presented harvester is provided. Experimental results verify that the presented vortex-induced vibrational tristable energy harvester performs better than the traditional linear vortex-induced vibration energy harvester.