Broadband pendulum energy harvester

A novel electromagnetic pendulum energy harvester with mechanical motion rectifier (MMR) is proposed and investigated in this paper. MMR is a mechanism which rectifies the bidirectional swing motion of the pendulum into unidirectional rotation of the generator by using two one-way clutches in the gear system. In this paper, two prototypes of pendulum energy harvester with MMR and without MMR are designed and fabricated. The dynamic model of the proposed MMR pendulum energy harvester is established by considering the engagement and disengagement of the one way clutches. The simulation results show that the proposed MMR pendulum energy harvester has a larger output power at high frequencies comparing with non-MMR pendulum energy harvester which benefits from the disengagement of one-way clutch during pendulum vibration. Moreover, the proposed MMR pendulum energy harvester is broadband compare with non-MMR pendulum energy harvester, especially when the equivalent inertia is large. An experiment is also conducted to compare the energy harvesting performance of these two prototypes. A flywheel is attached at the end of the generator to make the disengagement more significant. The experiment results also verify that MMR pendulum energy harvester is broadband and has a larger output power at high frequency over the non-MMR pendulum energy harvester.