Reliability of the bi-stable piezoelectric energy harvester under random excitation

The bi-stable piezoelectric energy harvester can produce higher voltage and efficiency than traditional energy harvester. In this manuscript, the reliability of the bi-stable piezoelectric energy harvester excited by Gaussian white noise is investigated. The equivalent uncoupled equation of system is deduced on the basis of the generalized harmonic transformation for the bi-stable piezoelectric energy harvester original coupling system. The averaged stochastic differential equation for system energy of the equivalent uncoupled system is established using the stochastic averaging method. The conditional reliability function and the mean first-passage time are derived through the backward Kolmogorov equation and the generalized Pontryagin equation associated with the averaged stochastic differential equation. The influences of noise intensity, electromechanical coupling coefficient, and time constant ratio on the conditional reliability function and mean first-passage time are discussed. The analytical results are highly consistent with the numerical results that are obtained by the Monte Carlo numerical simulation.