Scavenging wind energy by a Y-shaped bi-stable energy harvester with curved wings

In this paper we proposed a Y-shaped bi-stable energy harvester (YBEH) to scavenge the low-speed wind energy. The system is composed of a cantilever beam with a tip magnet and two curved wings, a piezoelectric laminate and two fixed magnets. To demonstrate the harvesting performance, corresponding validation experiments were performed over a range of velocities. The experimental results prove that this new wind harvester could execute snap-through and reach coherence resonance in a wide range of air flow speeds. Our findings may open a new opportunity to utilize coherence resonance to enhance the energy harvesting performance for low-speed wind flows. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.