On the Amplitude Truncation Effect in Electromagnetic Energy Harvesters: Modeling and Experimental Validation

Abstract

Energy harvesters based on a piecewise linear system make it possible to extract more energy from environment vibrations. The amplitude truncation effect is a phenomenon of an energy harvester with a piecewise linear system. It shows a wider energy harvesting bandwidth and lower voltage response than the purely linear counterpart. This work investigates the influence of spring length on the amplitude truncation effect and power density of electromagnetic energy harvesters. We first establish an analytical model of the piecewise linear system. Then, we apply the averaging method to explore the voltage responses in the frequency domain and compare the influence of various parameters. Later, we conduct a finite element simulation to analyze the voltage response at a constant frequency. The results obtained by the finite element simulation and averaging method match well with the experimental measurements. The experimental results demonstrate that the amplitude truncation effect is more visible at the shorter spring. Spring length plays a key role in power density of an electromagnetic energy harvester. The case of 40 mm yields a maximum average power of 45.138 mW. The case of 30 mm displays the maximum power density of 2.358 mW/cm3 .

Keywords: electromagnetic energy harvester, amplitude truncation effect, piecewise linear system, averaging method, power density