Abstracts

 Roberto Raul Deza IFIMAR (Mar del Plata U. and CONICET, Argentina) KPZ coupling of soft monostable energy harvesters In a recent work (this conference, talk by H. S. Wio) we have shown that piezoelectric energy harvesters obeying a potential of the form $a|x|$---the optimal ones among those obeying $U(x)=a|x|^n$---enhance their performance through \emph{antidiffusive} coupling of a few units. Moreover, this enhancement has been shown to entail a \emph{diffusive instability} at low values of the coupling constant. Now, recent work by H. S. Wio \emph{et al} on a generating functional for the KPZ equation shows that starting from \emph{any} configuration, the latter exhibits a short-time diffusive instability. In other words, the KPZ coupling term acts effectively as an antidiffusive coupling. This fact raised our interest in observing what happens when piezoelectric energy harvesters obeying $a|x|$ are coupled through KPZ---i.e.\ $(\nabla x)^2$---terms. Our preliminary results indicate an enhancement of performance, but at the cost of an advancement of the diffusive instability.

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