A diamagnetically stabilized horizontally levitated electromagnetic vibration energy harvester

This article investigates a horizontal diamagnetic levitation (HDL) system for vibration energy harvesting. In this configuration, two large magnets, alias lifting magnets, are arranged co-axially at a distance such that in between them a magnet, alias floating magnet, is passively levitated at a laterally offset equilibrium position. The levitation is stabilized in the horizontal direction by two diamagnetic plates made of pyrolytic graphite placed on each side of the floating magnet. This HDL configuration permits large amplitude vibration of the floating magnet and exploits the ability to tailor the geometry to meet specific applications due to its frequency tuning capability. Theoretical modeling techniques are discussed followed by an experimental setup to validate it. At an input root mean square (RMS) acceleration of 0.0434 m/s(2) (0.0044 g(rms)) and at a resonant frequency of 1.2 Hz, the prototype generated a RMS power of 3.6 mu W with an average system efficiency of 1.93%. Followed by the validation, parametric studies on the geometry of the components are undertaken to show that with the optimized parameters the efficiency can be further enhanced.