Analysis of Double Elastic Steel Wind Driven Magneto-Electric Vibration Energy Harvesting System

This research proposes an energy harvesting system that collects the downward airflow from a helicopter or a multi-axis unmanned rotary-wing aircraft and uses this wind force to drive the magnet to rotate, generating repulsive force, which causes the double elastic steel system to slap each other and vibrate periodically in order to generate more electricity than the traditional energy harvesting system. The design concept of the vibration mechanism in this study is to allow the elastic steel carrying the magnet to slap another elastic steel carrying the piezoelectric patch to form a set of double elastic steel vibration energy harvesting (DES VEH) systems. The theoretical DES VEH mechanism of this research is composed of a pair of cantilever beams, with magnets attached to the free end of one beam, and PZT attached to the other beam. This study analyzes the single beam system first. The MOMS method is applied to analyze the frequency response of this nonlinear system theoretically, then combines the piezoelectric patch and the magneto-electric coupling device with this nonlinear elastic beam to analyze the benefits of the system’s converted electrical energy. In the theoretical study of the DES VEH system, the slapping force between the two elastic beams was considered as a concentrated load on each of the beams. Furthermore, both SES and DES VEH systems are studied and correlated. Finally, the experimental data and theoretical results are compared to verify the feasibility and correctness of the theory. It is proven that this DES VEH system can not only obtain the electric energy from the traditional SES VEH system but also obtain the extra electric energy of the steel vibration subjected to the slapping force, which generates optimal power to the greatest extent.