Performance of Mechanical Bandpass Filters Used in Energy Scavenging in the Presence of Fabrication Errors and Coupling

Abstract

In this paper, several mathematical models that are more realistic representations of mechanical bandpass filters are studied. Such filters can be used in energy scavengers to convert energy from vibration sources into small amount of electricity. A mechanical bandpass filter is an ensemble of cantilever beams where at the tip of each beam a mass, known as the proof mass, is mounted. A beam with a proof mass at its tip is called a beam-mass system. By studying a variety of models representing the filter dynamics, it will be unraveled to what extent fabrication errors in beam-mass systems of a filter and/or the coupling of such systems can alter the bandpass behavior of a fabricated filter.