Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2022) 137: 588
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-022-02807-3

Regular Article

Research on multi-valued response and bursting oscillation of series multi-stable piezoelectric energy harvester

College of Mathematics and Computer Science, Zhejiang Normal University, 321004, Jinhua, Zhejiang, People’s Republic of China

^a qyh2004@zjnu.edu.cn

Received: 30 November 2021
Accepted: 6 May 2022
Published online: 14 May 2022

Abstract

Piezoelectric energy harvester has been considered as a useful structure to convert the vibration energy in the environment into electrical energy, but its efficiency in harvesting energy is poor owing to the low frequency environment. This paper proposes applying bifurcation theory to study the multi-stable series model, analyzing the multi-valued response, bursting oscillation and series-connected characteristics in low frequency excitation. On the one hand, the pentastable energy harvester has a richer multi-valued response. And it shows different types of bursting oscillation under low frequency excitation, which is associated with multiple single-valued response regions. On the other hand, the inverse piezoelectric phenomenon can be characterized as a series system, and the mechanism behind the inverse piezoelectric effect can be analyzed to understand the interactions between energy harvesters. Several results show that inverse piezoelectric effect will influence the performance of the system, especially in bursting oscillation. The difference between bistable and tristable systems are analyzed to be presumably caused by higher order terms. Bifurcation theory can be extended to other energy harvester model, which sheds light on dynamical behavior of the system.