A Programmable Hybrid Energy Harvester: Leveraging Buckling and Magnetic Multistability

Growing demands for self-powered, low-maintenance devices—especially in sensor networks, wearables, and the Internet of Things—have intensified interest in capturing ultra-low-frequency ambient vibrations. This paper introduces a hybrid energy harvester that combines elastic buckling with magnetical...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Azam Arefi, Abhilash Sreekumar, Dimitrios Chronopoulos
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2025-03-01
Series:Micromachines
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Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2072-666X/16/4/359
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Summary:Growing demands for self-powered, low-maintenance devices—especially in sensor networks, wearables, and the Internet of Things—have intensified interest in capturing ultra-low-frequency ambient vibrations. This paper introduces a hybrid energy harvester that combines elastic buckling with magnetically induced forces, enabling programmable transitions among monostable, bistable, and multistable regimes. By tuning three key parameters—buckling amplitude, magnet spacing, and polarity offset—the system’s potential energy landscape can be selectively shaped, allowing the depth and number of potential wells to be tailored for enhanced vibrational response and broadened operating bandwidths. An energy-based modeling framework implemented via an in-house MATLAB<sup>®</sup> R2024B code is presented to characterize how these parameters govern well depths, barrier heights, and snap-through transitions, while an inverse design approach demonstrates the practical feasibility of matching industrially relevant target force–displacement profiles within a constrained design space. Although the present work focuses on systematically mapping the static potential landscape, these insights form a crucial foundation for subsequent dynamic analyses and prototype validation, paving the way for advanced investigations into basins of attraction, chaotic transitions, and time-domain power output. The proposed architecture demonstrates modularity and tunability, holding promise for low-frequency energy harvesting, adaptive vibration isolation, and other nonlinear applications requiring reconfigurable mechanical stability.
ISSN:2072-666X