Feasibility Study of Evolvable Stochastic Resonance for Energy Harvesting Using a Bistable Mechanism

Abstract

Stochastic resonance is a physical phenomenon through which the throughput of energy within an oscillator excited by a stochastic source can be boosted by adding a small periodic modulating excitation. This study investigates the feasibility of evolvable stochastic resonance for improving energy harvesting. The motivating hypothesis for this work has been that evolvable stochastic resonance can be efficiently realized in a bistable mechanism. However, the condition for the occurrence of stochastic resonance is conventionally defined by the Kramers rate, and this is a shortcoming because of the necessity and difficulty of white noise density estimation. A bistable mechanism has been designed using a novel explicit analytical model which implies a new approach for achieving stochastic resonance. Experimental tests have validated this by showing that the addition of a small-scale force to the bistable system excited by Gaussian white noise apparently leads to a corresponding amplification of the response, and this is what we now term ‘evolvable stochastic resonance’. The study therefore indicates that evolvable stochastic resonance may be a promising way to improve the performance of an energy harvester under certain forms of noise excitation.