This paper presents an extensive experimental investigation to identify the influence of signal parameters on a piezoelectric harvester's performance. A macro-fibre composite energy harvester was studied as an advanced, flexible, high-performance energy material. Gaussian white noise, and single-frequency and multi-frequency excitation were used to investigate nonlinearity and multiple-frequency interactions. Using single low and high frequencies, we identified the nonlinearity of the harvester's vibration. Multi-frequency excitation with a series of low-to-high-frequency harmonics mimicked the practical vibration signal. Under such multi-frequency excitation, the harvester's nonlinear behaviour was studied. Finally, the interaction effects among multiple frequencies were identified. The results show that under pure resonant excitation, high-level vibration led to high-level mechanical strain, which caused nonlinear vibration behaviour. Moreover, it was shown that the different harmonics excited the various structure bending modes, which caused the nonlinearity of multi-frequency excitation. The first four harmonics of the real-time signal were important. The experimental results emphasise the resonant nonlinearity and interactions of multi-frequency excitation effects.
Keywords: nonlinearity; piezoelectric; random signal; real-time vibration; white noise.