Local and network behavior of bistable vibrational energy harvesters considering periodic and quasiperiodic excitations

Abstract

Vibrational energy harvesters can exhibit complex nonlinear behavior when exposed to external excitations. Depending on the number of stable equilibriums, the energy harvesters are defined and analyzed. In this work, we focus on the bistable energy harvester with two energy wells. Though there have been earlier discussions on such harvesters, all these works focus on periodic excitations. Hence, we are focusing our analysis on both periodic and quasiperiodic forced bistable energy harvesters. Various dynamical properties are explored, and the bifurcation plots of the periodically excited harvester show coexisting hidden attractors. To investigate the collective behavior of the harvesters, we mathematically constructed a two-dimensional lattice array of the harvesters. A non-local coupling is considered, and we could show the emergence of chimeras in the network. As discussed in the literature, energy harvesters are efficient if the chaotic regimes can be suppressed and hence we focus our discussion toward synchronizing the nodes in the network when they are not in their chaotic regimes. We could successfully define the conditions to achieve complete synchronization in both periodic and quasiperiodically excited harvesters.