Stochastic resonance energy harvesting for a rotating shaft subject to random and periodic vibrations: influence of potential function asymmetry and frequency sweep

Stochastic resonance is referred to as a physical phenomenon that is manifest in nonlinear systems whereby a weak periodic signal can be significantly amplified with the aid of inherent noise or vice versa. In this paper, stochastic resonance is considered to harvest energy from two typical vibrations in rotating shafts: random whirl vibration and periodic stick-slip vibration. Stick-slip vibrations impose a constant offset in centrifugal force and distort the potential function of the harvester, leading to potential function asymmetry. A numerical analysis based on a finite element method was conducted to investigate stochastic resonance with potential function asymmetry. Simulation results revealed that a harvester with symmetric potential function generates seven times higher power than that with asymmetric potential function. Furthermore, a frequency-sweep analysis also showed that stochastic resonance has hysteretic behavior, resulting in frequency difference between up-sweep and down-sweep excitations. An electromagnetic energy harvesting system was constructed to experimentally verify the numerical analysis. In contrast to traditional stochastic resonance harvesters, the proposed harvester uses magnetic force to compensate the offset in the centrifugal force. System identification was performed to obtain the parameters needed in the numerical analysis. With the identified parameters, the numerical simulations showed good agreement with the experiment results with around 10% error, which verified the effect of potential function asymmetry and frequency sweep excitation condition on stochastic resonance. Finally, attributed to compensating the centrifugal force offset, the proposed harvester generated nearly three times more open-circuit output voltage than its traditional counterpart.