Analysis and experiment of magneto-mechanically coupled harvesters

Current trend in energy harvesting research is to increase the operating bandwidth of energy harvesters. Multiple harvesters, nonlinear harvesters and hybrid harvesters are suggested to address the issue. In this paper, a system consisting of two electromagnetic harvesters with magnetic and mechanical couplings subjected to harmonic support excitations is proposed. Two pendulums with close resonating frequencies are used to generate power over a broad range of frequencies. The pendulums behave nonlinearly under the influence of magnetic interaction. This nonlinear motion harvests power at broader bandwidth. A mathematical model of the proposed harvester is established. Experiments are performed to validate the theoretical results. It has been observed that the nonlinear responses due to both magnet and mechanical couplings improve individual harvester performance. This is advantageous over harvesters that have magnetically coupling only. Additionally, the dynamics of harvesting system is numerically studied where large amplitude chaotic motion, quasi-periodic oscillations and periodic motions are observed and reported.