Harvesting energy from vibrations of the underlying structure

Abstract

The use of wireless sensors for structural health monitoring offers several advantages such as small size, easy installation and minimal intervention on existing structures. However the most significant concern about such wireless sensors is the lifetime of the system, which depends heavily on the type of power supply. No matter how energy efficient the operation of a battery operated sensor is, the energy of the battery will be exhausted at some point. In order to achieve a virtually unlimited lifetime, the sensor node should be able to recharge its battery in an easy way. Energy harvesting emerges as a technique that can harvest energy from the surrounding environment. Among all possible energy harvesting solutions, kinetic energy harvesting seems to be the most convenient, especially for sensors placed on structures that experience regular vibrations. Such micro-vibrations can be harmful to the long-term structural health of a building or bridge, but at the same time they can be exploited as a power source to power the wireless sensors that are monitoring this structural health. This paper presents a new energy harvesting method based on a vibration driven electromagnetic harvester. By using an improved Maximum Power Point Tracking technique on the conversion circuit, the proposed method is shown to maximize the conversion coefficient from kinetic energy to applicable electrical energy.

Optimization of sensor placement for structural health monitoring: a review

“…Some studies have been made in the area of energy harvesting to make the sensors self-sufficient in terms of energy. 108,109 Han et al 110 included the energy-harvesting potential of the sensors with the idea to have a self-sustaining WSN network for the SHM of a bridge structure. The sensors were placed keeping in mind the SHM demand as well as the vibration-based energy-harvesting potential.…”

A study of electromagnetic vibration energy harvesters with different interface circuits

“…It was believed that the energy harvesting efficiency would have a maximum value of 50% when the non-dimensional electromagnetic coupling coefficient becomes very large. Han et al [19] introduced a conversion circuit based on the maximum-power-point-tracking for an electromagnetic vibration energy harvester to maximise the conversion coefficient of harvestable kinetic energy to applicable electrical energy. Arroyo et al [3] optimised the geometry of an electromagnetic harvester of 10 cm 3 and claimed that the new electromagnetic harvester with the SMFE circuit was able to harvest a rectified power of 1.6 mW under the excitation acceleration amplitude of 1g at the centre frequency of 100 Hz over a 10 Hz bandwidth.…”

Experimental characterization and performance improvement evaluation of an electromagnetic transducer utilizing a tuned inerter

“…Traditionally, this research area has been focused on high-frequency vibrations such as 10 Hz or higher on the order of millimeter amplitude. The power harvested from such ambient vibration with piezoelectric devices has been limited to μW–mW scale for wireless sensing and embedded computing systems (Roundy et al., 2003; Beeby et al., 2006; Anton and Sodano, 2007; Knight et al., 2008; Han et al., 2013). Recently, energy harvesting employing electromagnetic devices from low-frequency oscillations has been receiving attention (Daqaq et al., 2009; Mahmoudi et al., 2014; Drezet et al., 2018).…”