Scaling and characterisation of a 2-DoF velocity amplified electromagnetic vibration energy harvester

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

O’Donoghue, D.; Frizzell, R.; Punch, J.

2018-07-01

Vibration energy harvesters (VEHs) offer an alternative to batteries for the autonomous operation of low-power electronics. Understanding the influence of scaling on VEHs is of great importance in the design of reduced scale harvesters. The nonlinear harvesters investigated here employ velocity amplification, a technique used to increase velocity through impacts, to improve the power output of multiple-degree-of-freedom VEHs, compared to linear resonators. Such harvesters, employing electromagnetic induction, are referred to as velocity amplified electromagnetic generators (VAEGs), with gains in power achieved by increasing the relative velocity between the magnet and coil in the transducer. The influence of scaling on a nonlinear 2-DoF VAEG is presented. Due to the increased complexity of VAEGs, compared to linear systems, linear scaling theory cannot be directly applied to VAEGs. Therefore, a detailed nonlinear scaling method is utilised. Experimental and numerical methods are employed. This nonlinear scaling method can be used for analysing the scaling behaviour of all nonlinear electromagnetic VEHs. It is demonstrated that the electromagnetic coupling coefficient degrades more rapidly with scale for systems with larger displacement amplitudes, meaning that systems operating at low frequencies will scale poorly compared to those operating at higher frequencies. The load power of the 2-DoF VAEG is predicted to scale as {P}L\\propto {s}5.51 (s = volume1/3), suggesting that achieving high power densities in a VAEG with low device volume is extremely challenging.

The influence of mass configurations on velocity amplified vibrational energy harvesters

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

O'Donoghue, D.; Frizzell, R.; Kelly, G.; Nolan, K.; Punch, J.

2016-05-01

Vibrational energy harvesters scavenge ambient vibrational energy, offering an alternative to batteries for the autonomous operation of low power electronics. Velocity amplified electromagnetic generators (VAEGs) utilize the velocity amplification effect to increase power output and operational bandwidth, compared to linear resonators. A detailed experimental analysis of the influence of mass ratio and number of degrees-of-freedom (dofs) on the dynamic behaviour and power output of a macro-scale VAEG is presented. Various mass configurations are tested under drop-test and sinusoidal forced excitation, and the system performances are compared. For the drop-test, increasing mass ratio and number of dofs increases velocity amplification. Under forced excitation, the impacts between the masses are more complex, inducing greater energy losses. This results in the 2-dof systems achieving the highest velocities and, hence, highest output voltages. With fixed transducer size, higher mass ratios achieve higher voltage output due to the superior velocity amplification. Changing the magnet size to a fixed percentage of the final mass showed the increase in velocity of the systems with higher mass ratios is not significant enough to overcome the reduction in transducer size. Consequently, the 3:1 mass ratio systems achieved the highest output voltage. These findings are significant for the design of future reduced-scale VAEGs.