A bistable buckled beam based approach for vibrational energy harvesting

This paper presents a low cost solution for vibrational energy harvesting based on a bistable clamped-clamped polyethylene terephthalate (PET) beam and two piezoelectric transducers. Beam switching (between two stable steady states) is activated by environmental vibrations. The mechanical-to-electrical energy conversion is performed by two piezoelectric transducers laterally installed to experience beam impacts each time the device switches from one stable state to the other one. The main advantage of our approach lies in the wide frequency bandwidth of the device; in turn, this leads to improved efficiency at very low cost.