This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program award provides a schema of integrated research and educational activities for delineating the physical underpinnings of vibratory energy harvesters' transduction under random and non-stationary excitations. Theories in probabilities and nonlinear vibrations are combined with computational techniques and specially designed experimental modules to i) understand the response of energy harvesters to time-varying frequency excitations, ii) characterize their transduction under random broad-band and narrow-band excitations, and iii) elucidate the influence of nonlinearities and bi-stabilities on their performance under realistic excitations. Research tasks are closely tied to myriad of educational activities that include i) a creative inquiry undergraduate project that involves the creation of an "energy harvesting carpet", ii) an outreach initiative called "Journey into Vibration Energy Harvesting" introducing energy harvesting principles to high school students and their teachers iii) extensive emphasis on diversity and recruitment of minority students, and iv) development of new graduate course offerings.
Successful completion of this CAREER award's objectives will lay the foundation and provide the necessary tools to develop efficient and transformative vibratory energy harvesters for excitation sources long considered impractical due to their random or non-stationary nature. Such harvesters will enable the widespread deployment of self-powered health-monitoring sensors, thusly avoiding catastrophic structural and machine failures (e.g. the 2007 St. Anthony's bridge collapse near Minneapolis, Minn.), and will reduce our dependence on batteries whose regular replacement and recharging pose significant challenges and risks especially for remotely installed devices, and for patients living with implantable medical appliances.
