Development of Vibration Damper for Energy Harvesting

Abstract

In vibration engineering, unnecessary vibration energy can be dissipated by a damper into not only heat energy but also electric energy for energy harvesting. But a common damper for energy harvesting has to be tuned into a resonance in order to reserve large vibration and therefore for frequency varying case, the efficiency is very low and the application is limited. In this study a special damper system is so designed as to generate sufficient electric power even for frequency varying case based on two approaches: the resonance of the damper can be adjusted corresponding to the input frequency and the fixture of the damper has multiple resonances which coincide the structural resonances. The damper system consisted of permanent magnet and coil is verified to have variable resonance and the resonances of the damper fixture are found to have coincident resonances. Finally the damper system is applied to a motor bike where sufficient power is generated in case of varying engine rotation.