Modeling and Analysis of the Power Conditioning Circuit for an Electromagnetic Human Walking-Induced Energy Harvester

Among the various alternative energy sources, harvesting energy from the movement of the human body has emerged as a promising technology. The interaction between the energy harvesting structure and the power conditioning circuit is nonlinear in nature, which makes selecting the appropriate design parameters a complex task. In this work, we present an electromagnetic energy harvesting system suitable for recovering energy from the movement of the lower limb joints during walking. The system under study is modeled and simulated, considering three different scenarios in which the energy source is the hip, knee, and ankle joint. The power generated by the energy harvester is estimated from kinematic data collected from an experimental gait study on a selected participant. State-space representation and Recurrence plots (RPs) are used to study the dynamical system's behavior resulting from the interaction between the electromagnetic structure and the power conditioning circuit. The maximum power obtained through the simulation considering a constant walking speed of 4.5 km/h lays in the range of 1.4 mW (ankle joint) to 90 mW (knee joint) without implementing a multiplier gear.

Automated summary

A system for harvesting energy from lower limb joints during walking is modeled and simulated in this work, with consideration given to the hip, knee, and ankle joints as energy sources. The maximum power generated by the energy harvester ranges from 1.4 mW (ankle joint) to 90 mW (knee joint) based on simulations with a constant walking speed of 4.5 km/h. The interaction between the electromagnetic structure and the power conditioning circuit is studied using state-space representation and Recurrence plots.