Abstract
Investigating the coil–magnet structure plays a significant role in the design process of the electromagnetic energy harvester due to the effect on the harvester’s performance. In this paper, the performance of four different electromagnetic vibration energy harvesters with cylindrical shapes constrained in the same volume were under investigation. The utilized structures are (i) two opposite polarized magnets spaced by a mild steel; (ii) a Halbach array with three magnets and one coil; (iii) a Halbach array with five magnets and one coil; and (iv) a Halbach array with five magnets and three coils. We utilized a completely automatic optimization procedure with the help of an optimization algorithm implemented in Python, supported by simulations in ANSYS Maxwell and MATLAB Simulink to obtain the maximum output power for each configuration. The simulation results show that the Halbach array with three magnets and one coil is the best for configurations with the Halbach array. Additionally, among all configurations, the harvester with two opposing magnets provides the highest output power and volume power density, while the Halbach array with three magnets and one coil provides the highest mass power density. The paper also demonstrates limitations of using the electromagnetic coupling coefficient as a metric for harvester optimization, if the ultimate goal is maximization of output power.
Highlights
In recent years, the concept of the internet of things (IoT) has developed rapidly in various fields [1,2,3]
Some of the models used in this optimization method include, but are not limit to, polynomials [35], radial basis functions (RBF) [36], Kriging models [37] and neural networks
The radial basis function (RBF) interpolation model is used as the surrogate model and ANSYS Maxwell and MATLAB Simulink are used for simulation
Summary
The concept of the internet of things (IoT) has developed rapidly in various fields [1,2,3]. Kim et al [29] optimized harvesters with cylindrical shape and compared the output voltage and output power according to various aspect ratios These studies have shown that the coil–magnet topology has a great impact on the electromagnetic energy harvester’s performance. The research objective is to investigate and compare the effect of different cylindrical magnetic structures on the harvester performance in a more systematic and fair manner. This is achieved by the introduction of a fully automatic optimization procedure, which simplifies the optimization work and provides a significant output power improvement.
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