Nonlinear snap-through-buckling devices for energy harvesting from vibrations

In this work authors present two low-cost nonlinear devices for vibrational energy harvesting which are able to convert low frequency mechanical vibrations into electrical energy. The two developed solutions exploit the advantages of a bistable device in a Snap-Through-Buckling (STB) configuration and a piezoelectric mechanical to electrical conversion mechanism. In fact it has been demonstrated that bistable systems, under the proper conditions, can provide better performances, compared to linear resonant oscillators, in terms of the amount of energy extracted from wide spectrum vibrations.