NONLINEAR COUPLING FACTOR MAXIMIZATION FOR A NEW CONFIGURATION OF ELECTROMAGNETIC ENERGY HARVESTER NUMERICAL STUDIES AND SIMULATION

Present paper explores a novel design of electromagnetic energy harvester to convert ambient vibration into electrical energy using induction. The emphasis of the current work is on the calculation of the nonlinear coupling factor of a novel architecture as well as comparing the system’s response in either a linear or a nonlinear coupling, typically invoked and applied by the physics of the architecture. We hypothesize that considering the nonlinearities in coupling could be utilized to improve the output of the energy harvester by widening its frequency response. The design adopts two configurations, each is distinguished by the alignment direction of the easy magnetization axis with the direction of motion or normal to it, this approach shows high configurability of the system with low retrofitting effort. Our investigations showed that with such an architecture, the consideration of the nonlinear nature of the coupling is paramount to the tuning of the architecture to the amplitude of harvestable ambient vibrations.