An electromagnetic wearable 3-DoF resonance human body motion energy harvester using ferrofluid as a lubricant

Wearable energy harvester offers clean and continuous power for wearable sensors or devices, and plays an important role in a wide range of applications such as the health monitoring and motion track. In this study, we investigate a small electromagnetic resonance wearable kinetic energy harvester. It consists of a permanent magnet (PM) supported by two elastic strings within a rectangular box form a 3-degree-of-freedom (3-DoF) vibrator. Copper windings are attached to the outer surface of the box to generate electrical energy when the PM is forced to vibrate. To minimize any frictional losses, ferrofluid is used such that the poles of PM are cushioned by the ferrofluid, to the effect that the PM will not touch the inner of the box. Simulation results show that the ferrofluid can keep the PM ‘contactless’ from the box even subject to 10 times gravity acceleration. A prototype is built and tested under different loading conditions. Resistance load experimental results indicate the proposed harvester can generate 1.1mW in walking condition and 2.28mW in running condition. An energy storage circuit is employed and the energy storage experimental results show that the average storage power during walking and running conditions are 0.014mW and 0.149mW respectively. It is shown that the developed harvester can be readily attached on a shoe to offer continuous power supply for wearable sensors and devices.

[1]  Eun Sok Kim,et al.  Electromagnetic Energy Harvester With Flexible Coils and Magnetic Spring for 1–10 Hz Resonance , 2015, Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems.

[2]  Daniel J. Inman,et al.  Nonlinear time-varying potential bistable energy harvesting from human motion , 2015 .

[3]  Gil Zussman,et al.  Movers and Shakers: Kinetic Energy Harvesting for the Internet of Things , 2015, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications.

[4]  Eun Sok Kim,et al.  Ferrofluid liquid spring for vibration energy harvesting , 2015, 2015 28th IEEE International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS).

[6]  Miah A. Halim,et al.  A miniaturized electromagnetic vibration energy harvester using flux-guided magnet stacks for human-body-induced motion , 2016 .

[7]  G. G. Stokes.  "J." , 1890, The New Yale Book of Quotations.

[8]  Joseph A. Paradiso,et al.  Parasitic power harvesting in shoes , 1998, Digest of Papers. Second International Symposium on Wearable Computers (Cat. No.98EX215).

[9]  Zhong Lin Wang,et al.  Human skin based triboelectric nanogenerators for harvesting biomechanical energy and as self-powered active tactile sensor system. , 2013, ACS nano.

[10]  S Ju,et al.  Electromagnetic Vibration Energy Harvester Using Springless Proof Mass and Ferrofluid as a Lubricant , 2013 .

[11]  Richard Heydt,et al.  Electroelastomers: applications of dielectric elastomer transducers for actuation, generation, and smart structures , 2002, SPIE Smart Structures and Materials + Nondestructive Evaluation and Health Monitoring.

[12]  S. Van Veen,et al.  Planar Ferrofluid Bearings for Precision Stages , 2013 .

[14]  Yi Qi,et al.  Nanotechnology-enabled flexible and biocompatible energy harvesting , 2010 .

[15]  Eun Sok Kim,et al.  Power generation from human body motion through magnet and coil arrays with magnetic spring , 2014 .

[16]  Nan-Chyuan Tsai,et al.  Human powered MEMS-based energy harvest devices , 2012 .

[17]  Junyi Cao,et al.  Broadband tristable energy harvester: Modeling and experiment verification , 2014 .

[18]  Gil Zussman,et al.  Movers and Shakers: Kinetic Energy Harvesting for the Internet of Things , 2013, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications.

[19]  J A Hoffer,et al.  Biomechanical Energy Harvesting: Generating Electricity During Walking with Minimal User Effort , 2008, Science.

[20]  D. Inman,et al.  A Review of Power Harvesting from Vibration using Piezoelectric Materials , 2004 .

[21]  Yiannos Manoli,et al.  Energy harvesting from human motion: exploiting swing and shock excitations , 2015 .

[22]  Luca Gammaitoni,et al.  Kinetic energy harvesting with bistable oscillators , 2012 .

[23]  Timothy C. Green,et al.  Energy Harvesting From Human and Machine Motion for Wireless Electronic Devices , 2008, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[24]  M. Cutroneo,et al.  Aluminium plasma production at high laser intensity , 2014 .

[25]  Neil M. White,et al.  Modeling the Effect of Orientation on Human-Powered Inertial Energy Harvesters , 2015, IEEE Sensors Journal.

[26]  Chengkuo Lee,et al.  Electromagnetic energy harvesting from vibrations of multiple frequencies , 2009 .

[27]  David P. Arnold,et al.  Spherical, rolling magnet generators for passive energy harvesting from human motion , 2009 .

[28]  Joseph A. Paradiso,et al.  Energy Scavenging with Shoe-Mounted Piezoelectrics , 2001, IEEE Micro.

[29]  Thad Starner,et al.  Human-Powered Wearable Computing , 1996, IBM Syst. J..

[30]  Jae Yeong Park,et al.  Design and experiment of a human-limb driven, frequency up-converted electromagnetic energy harvester , 2015 .

[31]  Junyi Cao,et al.  Efficient energy harvesting from human motion by tristable piezoelectric cantilever , 2015, 2015 Symposium on Piezoelectricity, Acoustic Waves, and Device Applications (SPAWDA).

[32]  Gwiy-Sang Chung,et al.  Design and Analysis of a Vibration-driven AA Size Electromagnetic Energy Harvester Using Magnetic Spring , 2012 .

[33]  Anantha Chandrakasan,et al.  A Battery-Less Thermoelectric Energy Harvesting Interface Circuit With 35 mV Startup Voltage , 2010, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[34]  Dasheng Lee,et al.  Energy Harvesting Chip and the Chip Based Power Supply Development for a Wireless Sensor Network , 2008, Sensors.

[35]  Markus Zahn,et al.  Magnetic fluid rheology and flows , 2005 .

[36]  Kyle Pietrzyk,et al.  Power generation modeling for a wearable thermoelectric energy harvester with practical limitations , 2016 .

[37]  Mohammed F. Daqaq,et al.  Electromagnetic ferrofluid-based energy harvester , 2012 .

[38]  Martin Kroger,et al.  Ferrofluids: Magnetically Controllable Fluids and Their Applications , 2004 .

[39]  Weiqing Yang,et al.  Harvesting energy from the natural vibration of human walking. , 2013, ACS nano.

[40]  R. Ravaud,et al.  Mechanical Properties of Ferrofluid Applications: Centering Effect and Capacity of a Seal , 2010 .

[41]  Jingjing Zhao,et al.  A Shoe-Embedded Piezoelectric Energy Harvester for Wearable Sensors , 2014, Sensors.

[42]  Wei-Hsin Liao,et al.  Magnetic-spring based energy harvesting from human motions: Design, modeling and experiments , 2017 .

[43]  D. Lee,et al.  Ferrohydrodynamic energy harvesting based on air droplet movement , 2015 .

[44]  R. Ravaud,et al.  Design of Ironless Loudspeakers with Ferrofluid Seals: Analytical Study Based on the Coulombian Model , 2009 .