Linear electric generator with Halbach array to self-charge a smartphone

Cellular phones have not only function to communicate, but also have e-banking, web surfing, music, and entertainment. The performance of the smartphone has improved because of various functions of smartphone, and capacity of battery has also improved gradually. Although smartphone batteries have been improved compared to conventional batteries, the available usage time of a phone’s rechargeable battery is getting shorter because of the demands of various applications. Therefore, we propose a new tubular permanent magnet linear generator that uses a Halbach array, to send a message or emergency call when the battery is discharged. In order to increase the power generation of existing tubular linear generators, we changed the axial-direction permanent magnet array to a Halbach-type array. When using the Halbach array, it is possible to generate a strong magnetic field without additional magnetic material. In this research, we compared the Halbach array that uses axially and radially magnetized permanent magnets with an existing model that uses an axially magnets. We verified improvement in the amount of power generated with no-load analysis through simulation using the Maxwell commercial electromagnetic analysis software.