Combined mechanical and circuit nonlinearities in electrostatic vibration energy harvesters

The aim of this paper is to study an electrostatic vibration energy harvester that utilises a nonlinear resonator. A vibration energy harvester represents a system where a mechanical resonator driven by ambient vibrations is coupled with a conditioning electronic circuit, which acts as a damper and converts mechanical energy into electrical. If a nonlinear resonator is embedded into the conditioning circuit, nonlinearity will appear from both mechanical and circuit components of the system. We expand the analytical approach that we developed in our previous works to the case of combined mechanical and circuit nonlinearities. This allow us to analyze steady-state behavior and compare it with the linear case. In addition, we discuss a specific nonlinear phenomena that is introduced by the discontinuity of the system - the sliding bifurcation. We show that the onset of steady-state quasi-harmonic oscillations occur through the disappearance of sliding motion.