Combined mechanical and circuit nonlinearities in electrostatic vibration energy harvesters

The aim of this paper is to study an electrostatic
vibration energy harvester that utilises a nonlinear resonator.
A vibration energy harvester represents a system where a
mechanical resonator driven by ambient vibrations is coupled
with a conditioning electronic circuit, which acts as a damper
and converts mechanical energy into electrical. If a nonlinear
resonator is embedded into the conditioning circuit, nonlinearity
will appear from both mechanical and circuit components of the
system. We expand the analytical approach that we developed
in our previous works to the case of combined mechanical
and circuit nonlinearities. This allow us to analyze steady-state
behavior and compare it with the linear case. In addition, we
discuss a specific nonlinear phenomena that is introduced by the
discontinuity of the system — the sliding bifurcation. We show
that the onset of steady-state quasi-harmonic oscillations occur
through the disappearance of sliding motion.