Nonlinear energy harvesting through a multimodal electro-mechanical system

A semi-analytical method is used to illustrate the behavior of a multimodal nonlinear electromechanical system which is under base-excitation. System is considered as piezo-ceramic patches attached to a cantilever beam coupled to a resistive load. The cantilever beam is modeled as a nonlinear Timoshenko beam using Assumed Mode method and equations of motion are derived through Lagrange's equation. Nonlinear multimodal equations are solved with Complexification Averaging method and results are compared with numerical simulations. Arc length Continuation method is used to achieve frequency response of the system. Results are presented for different values of geometric and physical parameters and the effect of this variations are discussed.