Portable Energy Harvesters by Additive Manufacturing

Authors

Clarke, Charisma

Steel, Kyle

Romero, Edwar

Abstract

Wearable devices keep growing in popularity while raising the interest in improved battery life. Energy harvesters that harness kinetic energy could offer an option to extend service life or even replace batteries. Body motion is rich in a complex combination of movement, which is mainly limited to planar motion. Traditional inertial generators are designed to resonate at a fixed frequency where devices need to be tuned for a particular operation. Nonlinear generators, on the other hand, offer the possibility of a wide bandwidth by altering the response. Besides, the subharmonic and superharmonic resonances make them of interest for applications where those frequencies can be used to generate energy in addition to the main resonant frequency. This work showcases one nonlinear design that employs the properties of thermoplastic materials and an electromagnetic generator to operate at 39 Hz with an RMS power of 1.6 µW