Energy harvesting below the onset of flutter

Abstract

This work demonstrates preliminary results on energy harvesting from a linearly stable flutter-type system with circulatory friction forces. Harmonic external forcing is applied to study the energy flow in the steady sliding configuration. In certain parameter ranges negative excitation work is observed where the external forcing allows to pull part of the friction energy out of the system and thus makes energy harvesting possible. Studies reveal that this behavior is largely independent of the flutter point and thus that it is primarily controlled by the excitation. Contrary to existing energy harvesting approaches for such systems, this approach uses external forcing in the linearly stable regime of the oscillator which allows to control vibrations and harvest energy on demand.