Abstract
In this paper, an electro-mechanical system with a time-varying damper, which is capable of changing the damping coefficient impulsively, is considered. The effect of the impulsive parametric damping to the modal energy content of the mechanical system is investigated analytically as well as numerically. First, the governing differential equation is presented and then the solution of the system's response is obtained through numerical integration. The energy dissipated by the damper is then calculated to investigate the amount of the energy that can be harvested, and the results are compared with the results from a system without parametric impulses. It is shown, that the amount of the harvested energy can be increased by introducing parametric impulses. Then, an analytical formulation is derived for the system using Dirac-Delta impulses and the analytical results are validated with numerical simulations. The device is subjected to an initial condition and therefore is vibrating freely without any base excitation. This could be used for applications such as harvesting energy from the passage of a train, where the train vibration can introduce an initial velocity to the harvester and the energy can then be extracted from the free vibration of the harvester.
Highlights
Excited systems exhibit interesting dynamic behaviour and have been investigated extensively in the past [1, 2]
The blue-colored lines represent the results of the mechanical system where only natural damping is present
Impulsive damping can be used in active vibration control
Summary
Excited systems exhibit interesting dynamic behaviour and have been investigated extensively in the past [1, 2]. Tondl [6], leads to a coupling of the respective modes of vibration and allows to suppress self-excited vibrations [6] Due to this interaction between the modes, energy is transferred in a periodic manner from one mode to another [7, 8] and vice versa. Parametric excitation with periodic time-varying damping has been considered for energy harvesting applications [12, 13]. A potential application of impulsive parametric damping is presented for energy harvesting from train vibrations. Numerical simulations are carried out based on measured vibration acceleration data of an Intercity 125 UK train and therewith, the effect of impulsive parametric damping on the harvested energy is discussed
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