A pendulum-type magnetoelectric vibration energy harvester with frequency-doubling characteristics

To overcome the easy fracture of cantilever-based harvesters under large amplitude vibration, this paper presents a magnetoelectric vibration energy harvester based on rotary pendulum-type structures. The harvester is made up of a rotary pendulum embedded with six magnets and a magnetoelectric transducer. The dynamic equation of the rotary pendulum-type structures is established. An analytical model is developed to analyze the nonlinear vibration and electrical-output performances of the harvester. A prototype is fabricated and tested. The analytical and experimental results show that the harvester has frequency-doubling characteristics and can produce high power at low frequency vibration. The prototype produces a power of 980μW for an acceleration of 0.4g (1g=9.8ms^-2) at resonant frequency of 14.1Hz.