Disturbance observer–based terminal sliding mode control for effective performance of a nonlinear vibration energy harvester

We propose a new scheme to control the coexisting attractors in a bistable piezomagnetoelastic power generator. Coexisting periodic or chaotic attractors frequently occur in nonlinear energy harvesters. For effective performance of the energy harvester, the system is desired to operate on the high-energy periodic orbit. Therefore, a controller may be used to force the system to operate on the high-energy orbit. In the present research, a disturbance observer–based terminal sliding mode control with input saturation is proposed to push the system from low-energy periodic and chaotic attractors to high-energy periodic attractors. Furthermore, to minimize the energy required for the controller, a genetic algorithm optimization is employed to determine the bound of the input saturation and parameters of the controller. A major advantage of the proposed control technique is tracking control while control input limitations, significant concerns for energy harvesting purpose, are present. The Lyapunov stability theorem of the closed-loop system is proven in the presence of control input saturation and external disturbance. In addition to the primary resonance, superharmonic resonance is considered. The numerical results show that the proposed method can successfully control and shift the vibration energy harvesting system between different attractors in the presence of uncertainty and with minimal control energy budget.