Abstract
Vibration-based energy harvesters brought the idea of self-powered sensors to reality in the past few years. Many strategies to improve the performance of linear vibration energy harvesters that collect energy over a limited bandwidth have been proposed. In this paper, a bi-stable two degrees of freedom (2-DOF) cut-out vibration energy harvester employing a pair of permanent magnets is designed through a proposed design methodology. Based on this methodology, the nonlinear harvesters can be optimally designed such that the bandwidth can be widened for a targeted output voltage. The proper selection of the harvester parameters as well as the gap distances between the tip and the fixed magnets are the bases of this methodology. The mathematical modeling of the proposed harvester and the formula for the potential energy between the tip and the fixed magnets are presented. Additionally, to enhance the performance of the bi-stable energy harvester (BEH), a quad-stable energy harvester (QEH) was configured by adding more fixed magnets. Experiments were performed to validate the numerical simulations and the results showed that, the simulation and experimental results are consistent. The results indicate that, the QEH covers a wider bandwidth than the BEH and based on a figure of merit the QEH shows the best performance among many harvesters presented in the literature.
Highlights
Energy harvesting from vibrations has become a potential technology to power portable and wireless small electronics instead of batteries
A nonlinear bi-stable energy harvester (BEH) 2-DOF cut-out vibration energy harvester designed based on a systematic design methodology to scavenge vibration energy with a specific frequency range is introduced in this paper
A quad-stable energy harvester (QEH) is developed to improve the performance of the BEH and covers a wider bandwidth
Summary
Energy harvesting from vibrations has become a potential technology to power portable and wireless small electronics instead of batteries. The concept of nonlinearity using magnetic interaction was introduced to enhance the performance of the linear vibration energy harvesters in terms of the wide bandwidth and large output power. The experimental results verified that, the tip mass can snap through all the potential wells, leading to more power generation and wider bandwidth Another design based on an arc-shaped cantilever beam to achieve a bi-stable energy harvester was theoretically and experimentally studied in [28]. For the sake of enhancing the bandwidth of the 2-DOF cut-out harvester that was formerly studied in [21], a fixed permanent magnet was introduced to oppose another magnet attached to the mass of the secondary beam in [33] The performance of this nonlinear 2-DOF configuration was evaluated by carrying out an experimental parametric study.
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