Vibration Energy Harvesting

Most mechanical systems produce some form of unwanted mechanical vibration. The kinetic energy represented by the mechanical vibration must be produced by the machine, but in most cases is not useful and thus represents an energy lost from the mechanical system. Vibration energy harvesting attempts to recover the vibrational kinetic energy by transducing the energy from the mechanical domain to the electrical domain. The group is investigating several ideas to help increase the effectiveness of proof mass based electromagnetic harvesters. One major goal of the research effort is to quantify the amount of energy that can be harvested as a function of the properties of the input vibration. A second major goal of the research effort is to produce a proof-of-concept level prototype that is able to harvest a reasonable target power from a given "real-world" vibration reference.