A Device for Harvesting Energy From Rotational Vibrations

A new device designed to harvest rotational vibration energy is presented. The device is modeled as a spring-mass-damper system connected to a vibration source where a torsion rod is used as a spring element and a shearing electromagnetic induction circuit as the energy harvesting element. The devic...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Pabon, Jahir, Trimble, A. Zachary, Lang, Jeffrey H, Slocum, Alexander H
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Format: Article
Published: ASME International 2019
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/119837
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5765-4369
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5048-4109
Description
Summary:A new device designed to harvest rotational vibration energy is presented. The device is modeled as a spring-mass-damper system connected to a vibration source where a torsion rod is used as a spring element and a shearing electromagnetic induction circuit as the energy harvesting element. The device is inherently a resonant type harvester. A prototype device is tested using a purely sinusoidal vibration input and more realistic inputs consisting of wider bandwidths, multiple resonance peaks, and low amplitude noise. The performance of the prototype to realistic inputs verifies the ongoing challenge to vibration energy harvesting, namely, significant loss of performance when using broadband inputs with resonant based devices.