Impact of external excitations on blinking enhanced synchronization in bistable vibrational energy harvesters

Abstract

Vibrational energy harvesters are capable of converting low-frequency broad-band mechanical energy into electrical power and can be used in implantable medical devices and wireless sensors. With the use of such energy harvesters, it is feasible to generate continuous power that is more reliable and cost-effective. According to previous findings, the energy harvester can offer rich complex dynamics, one of which is obtaining the synchronization behavior, which is intriguing to achieve desirable power from energy harvesters. Therefore, we consider bistable energy harvesters with periodic and quasiperiodic excitations to investigate synchronization. Specifically, we introduce blinking into the coupling function to check whether it improves the synchronization. Interestingly, we discover that raising the normalized proportion of blinking can initiate synchronization behaviors even with lower optimal coupling strength than the absence of blinking in the coupling (i.e., continuous coupling). The existence of synchronization behaviors is confirmed by finding the largest Lyapunov exponents. In addition, the results show that the optimal coupling strength needed to achieve synchronization for quasiperiodic excitations is smaller than that for periodic excitations.