Energy-harvesting device with mechanical frequency-up conversion mechanism for increased power efficiency and wideband operation

In this paper, we propose an energy-harvesting device that uses snap-through buckling for mechanical frequency-up conversion. The proposed device consists of buckled slender bridges with a proof mass and cantilever beams attached on them. When subjected to a low-frequency vibration above the threshold acceleration value, the buckled bridges snap through between two equilibrium states, providing high acceleration to the attached piezoelectric cantilever beams and thus causing them to resonate at a high frequency. A maximum power of 131 mu W was generated at an excitation frequency of 30 Hz and a peak acceleration of 30 m/s(2) by using a proposed device.