A broadband bi-stable flow energy harvester based on the wake-galloping phenomenon

Linear wake-galloping flow energy harvesters have a narrow frequency bandwidth restricted to the lock-in region, where the vortex shedding frequency is close to the natural frequency of the harvester. As a result, their performance is very sensitive to variations in the flow speed around the nominal design value. This letter demonstrates that the lock-in region of a wake-galloping flow energy harvester can be improved by exploiting a bi-stable restoring force. To demonstrate the enhanced performance, the response behavior of a bi-stable piezoelectric cantilever harvester is evaluated in a wind tunnel. A Von Kármán vortex street is generated by placing a rectangular rod in the windward direction of the harvester and the voltage response of the harvester is evaluated as a function of the wind speed. It is shown that, compared to the linear design, bi-stability can be used to improve the steady-state bandwidth considerably.