Numerical Feasibility Study for a Spaceborne Cooler Dual-function Energy Harvesting System

Spaceborne cryocoolers produce undesirable micro-vibration disturbances during their on-orbit operation, which are a primary source of image-quality degradation for high-resolution observation satellites. Therefore, to comply with the strict mission requirement of high-quality image acquisition, micro-vibration disturbances induced by cooler operation have always been subjected to an isolation objective. However, in this study, we focused on the applicability of energy harvesting technology to generate electrical energy from micro-vibration energy of the cooler and investigated the feasibility of utilizing harvested energy as a power source to operate low-power-consumption devices such as micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) devices. A tuned mass damper (TMD)-type electromagnetic energy harvester combined with a conventional passive vibration isolator was proposed to achieve this objective. The system performs the dual functions of electrical energy generation and micro-vibration isolation. The effectiveness of the strategy was evaluated through numerical simulations.