Energy harvesting from a dynamic vibro-impact dielectric elastomer generator subjected to rotational excitations

A vibro-impact (VI) dielectric elastomer generator (DEG) subjected to rotational excitations is studied in this paper for energy harvesting (EH). The VI DEG that has been demonstrated as an advanced vibrational energy harvester is first introduced, and an impact model is proposed to experimentally validate the energy harvesting mechanism of the impact-based DEGs. The VI DEG is then considered to harvest energy from a rotational excitation by being installed onto rotational machinery. The dynamical and electrical responses of the proposed system are fully studied through both theoretical analysis and numerical simulations. It is found that the system presents rich dynamical behaviors under the rotational excitation, and the rotational speed and the distance between two membranes are two key parameters to affect the system’s response and EH performance. Research results show the superiority of the proposed system which can produce a maximal output power as high as 0.88 mW from rotational excitations, and also provide guidelines to study the rotational speed-related system EH performance with given dimensional parameters or optimize the dimensional parameters under a given rotational speed.