A Programmable Hybrid Energy Harvester: Leveraging Buckling and Magnetic Multistability

Growing demands for self-powered, low-maintenance devices-especially in sensor networks, wearables, and the Internet of Things-have intensified interest in capturing ultra-low-frequency ambient vibrations. This paper introduces a hybrid energy harvester that combines elastic buckling with magnetically induced forces, enabling programmable transitions among monostable, bistable, and multistable regimes. By tuning three key parameters-buckling amplitude, magnet spacing, and polarity offset-the system's potential energy landscape can be selectively shaped, allowing the depth and number of potential wells to be tailored for enhanced vibrational response and broadened operating bandwidths. An energy-based modeling framework implemented via an in-house MATLAB^® R2024B code is presented to characterize how these parameters govern well depths, barrier heights, and snap-through transitions, while an inverse design approach demonstrates the practical feasibility of matching industrially relevant target force-displacement profiles within a constrained design space. Although the present work focuses on systematically mapping the static potential landscape, these insights form a crucial foundation for subsequent dynamic analyses and prototype validation, paving the way for advanced investigations into basins of attraction, chaotic transitions, and time-domain power output. The proposed architecture demonstrates modularity and tunability, holding promise for low-frequency energy harvesting, adaptive vibration isolation, and other nonlinear applications requiring reconfigurable mechanical stability.