Abstract
Control and structural health monitoring sensors are becoming increasingly common in industrial and household applications due to recent advances reducing their manufacturing costs, size and power consumption. Nevertheless, providing power for these sensors poses a key challenge to engineers, particularly in system locations where limited access renders regular maintenance infeasible due to high associated costs. In the present work, the design and physical prototype testing of a nonlinear electromagnetic vibration energy harvester is presented based on a previously reported concept of the authors. The harvester is activated by the torsional speed fluctuations of a rotating shaft. Experimental testing in a rig driven by an electric motor confirms the harvester’s properties and the modelled oscillatory behaviour. This novel rotational vibration energy harvester concept may generate over 10 mW of electrical power for a broadband speed range of approximately 400 rpm (in the examined rotational system with set fluctuating speed) for wireless sensing purposes on rotating shafts.
Highlights
IntroductionVarious industrial applications (such as marine, aerospace, automotive, renewable energy) comprise propulsion systems that commonly exhibit rotational speed fluctuations, which are periodic in nature
Various industrial applications comprise propulsion systems that commonly exhibit rotational speed fluctuations, which are periodic in nature
There is a dearth in the literature with regard to Vibration Energy Harvesting (VEH) for rotational applications
Summary
Various industrial applications (such as marine, aerospace, automotive, renewable energy) comprise propulsion systems that commonly exhibit rotational speed fluctuations, which are periodic in nature. The design of broadband vibration energy harvesters for rotational systems – in particular propulsion applications – has been the main motivation behind this work This originates from the ever increasing requirements to obtain accurate, real-time information for structural health monitoring during operation, without the use of batteries and harnessing. The concept of the proposed electromagnetic nonlinear vibration energy harvester is briefly explained This comprises a balanced rotor mounted on an oscillating shaft (so that it can rotate with respect to the axis along the shaft length) and a nonlinear torsional spring connecting the rotor to the shaft. The design challenge is first to numerically determine the properties of the energy harvester (rotor inertia, elasticity connecting the rotor to the oscillating shaft and damping mechanism) and to implement these by developing and manufacturing a physical prototype that performs according to specific power output requirements (over 10 mW of electrical power for a few hundred rpm of shaft speed). In the linear region, where the force is below the critical force threshold (F Fc), the spring deflection is given by: s
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