Energy Harvesting Using Mechanical Absorber

In recent years, vibration energy harvesting is receiving a considerable amount of
interest among the researchers. With the global concern on energy issues, this lead to an
increase in the study of vibration based energy harvesting and use it as an alternative
source of energy. This paper presents an idea on harvesting energy using the mass spring
absorber system attached with a transducer. The aim is to investigate the effect of
damping, mass, stiffness and bandwidth towards energy harvesting system performance.
The stiffness, mass, damping and bandwidth will be the parameter to be studied. This
will enable author to investigate the behavior of each parameter towards the system and
how its effect the power output. Simple mechanical absorber system will be modeled
based on the undamped, damped and forced vibration second degree of freedom
equation of motion. Based on the mathematical equation derived, the stiffness, mass,
damping and bandwidth is simulated and how its affect the system is observed. The
results shows that amplitude will increase as damping is decreases, while amplitude will
be decrease as damping higher. The optimum mass ratio (M2/M1) of the system is
between 5%-10%. The acceptable range of bandwidth ratio is from 5% to 30%, as
higher ratio will lead to less power output from the system.