impact-enhanced electrostatic vibration energy harvester

An influence of mechanical impacts between variable capacitor electrodes on the electrostatic vibration energy harvester (e-veh) operation is studied theoretically. the analysis is carried out for two conditioning circuits with parallel and serial load connection. a relationship between e-veh parameters and external mechanical force characteristics enabling to assess the possibility of operation in a periodic impact mode is obtained. dependences of the average power generated by the impactenhanced e-veh versus the number of collisions between the electrodes and the load resistor value are calculated. the operation of the harvester for two circuits in impact and non-impact modes is compared and analyzed. it is shown that the average power generated by the e-veh for the impact mode can exceed the power for the non-impact mode by 1–2 orders of magnitude along with a significant decrease of the harvester optimal load resistance.