Design of a Vibration Energy Harvester based on Coupled Oscillators

In this paper vibration energy harvesters based on coupled oscillators were compared to single degree of freedom (SDoF) systems. The harvester concepts were compared based on two cases: 1) a signal where a combination of two harmonic motions is continuously present and 2) a signal where the harmonic motions are alternating. Three configurations of the coupled oscillator harvester concept were presented and optimized for maximum power output. It was found that a coupled oscillator with two electromagnetic dampers performed equally well as an array of two SDoF systems. Coupled oscillators with only a single electromagnetic damper performed worse than the SDoF array. A prototype was built to validate the simulations and good correspondence between simulations and experiments was found.