The study investigated the role of excitation in energy harvesting applications. While the energy ultimately comes from the excitation, it was shown that the excitation may not always behave as a source. When the device characteristics do not perfectly match the excitation, the excitation alternately behaves as a source and a sink. The extent to which the excitation behaves as a sink determines the energy harvesting efficiency. Such contradictory roles were shown to be dictated by a generalized phase defined as the instantaneous phase angle between the velocity of the device and the excitation. An inductive prototype device with a diamagnetically levitated seismic mass was proposed to take advantage of the well established phase changing mechanism of vibro-impact to achieve a broader device bandwidth. Results suggest that the vibro-impact can generate an instantaneous, significant phase shift in response velocity that switches the role of the excitation. If introduced properly outside the resonance zone it could dramatically increase the energy harvesting efficiency.
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