Enhancing Energy Harvesting in Harmonically Forced Oscillators via Regenerative Impulsive Braking

arXiv:2610.08488v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: This paper investigates whether regenerative impulsive braking can enhance passive energy harvesting in harmonically forced oscillators. An impulsive braking event directly extracts kinetic energy while simultaneously inducing a transient that alters subsequent passive harvesting. The analysis shows that suitably timed braking can produce a net energy gain over passive harvesting alone. The braking-induced transient is derived analytically and used to obtain an exact expression for the harvested-energy gain over an arbitrary finite post-braking horizon, together with conditions for positive gain and the optimal braking instant. The corresponding infinite-horizon analysis shows that optimal braking occurs at zero crossings of the harmonic excitation, with complete braking maximizing the gain. Numerical results further show that the finite-horizon harvested-energy gain can exceed its infinite-horizon value. Simulations using short-duration high-gain braking closely match analysis, supporting potential of the proposed approach for energy-harvesting applications.