Design of a double spring membrane for a two degree-of-freedom electromagnetic vibration energy harvester

authors

• Perez Matthias
• Billon Kevin
• Chesné Simon
• Jean-Mistral Claire
• Bouvet Sandrine
• Clerc Christian

abstract

This paper reports on the design of a cm-scale double spring membrane used in a two degree-of-fre edom electromagnetic vibration energy harvester for railway monitoring applications. This type of membrane design enables to achieve very low stiffness for the springs (typically between 1N.mm-1 up to 10N.mm-1 ) in one piece, which reduces manufacturing los ses and greatly simplify the system assembly. In addition, they are very thin, resulting in extremely compact devices, which is very important in energy harvesting. The mechanical modelling of different types of membranes was performed using a finite element approach in order to highlight the best geometry. A series of membranes have been manufactured by machining into a non-magnetic steel and tested with the entire energy harvester.

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