Design of a novel linear permanent magnet vibration energy harvester

This paper presents a novel linear tubular permanent magnet (PM) energy harvester to scavenge energy from ambient vibrations. The proposed linear PM energy harvester consists of a mover attached with PMs and a slotted stator with build-in two-phase electromagnetic coils to induce the electromagnetic induction for converting vibrations into useful electrical energy. The magnetic circuit model of the PM harvester is built to analyze the parameters about scavenging energy and used to optimize the non-dimensional geometry factors and the structural parameters in order to maximize harvested energy under given vibration and space conditions. To confirm the design, dynamic FE simulations were conducted and compared with the analytical results. Simulation results indicate that the proposed PM harvester is able to scavenge about 100 W DC power when the RMS of vibration velocity equals to 0.4 m/s. Also, the harvested power increases as the vibration velocity increasing.