Modeling and simulation of vibration energy harvester with piezomagnetoelastic beam array

Piezoelectric vibration energy harvesters as an autonomous power source for wireless sensor networks have attracted increasing attention in recent years. Conventional vibration harvesters are linear mass-spring devices with single beam. In order to improve the output power of vibration energy harvesters, a piezomagnetoelastic beam array configuration for vibration energy harvester is proposed. It consists of piezoelectric beam array harvester coupled to permanent magnets to create a bistable system. Electromechanical coupling model describing the proposed nonlinear vibration energy harvester is built along with computing simulations. The simulation analysis shows that the proposed nonlinear vibration energy harvester generates larger output power within several excitation frequency ranges compared to conventional vibration harvesters.