On the Modeling and Analysis of an Energy Harvester Moving Vibration Absorber for Power Lines

Wind-induced vibration of power lines has been a major challenge for design engineers for decades. Hitherto, there is no effective devices that can suppress these vibrations throughout a wide range of resonant frequencies. This paper presents a promising vibration suppression technique using an energy harvester moving vibration absorber (EHMVA), which can simultaneously harvest energy and suppress the vibrations. The vibration-based energy harvesting can be achieved using an electromagnetic transducer, which replaces the viscous damping element of conventional absorbers. This harvested energy can then be utilized to power small sensors and electronic devices required for EHMVA to adapt to wind characteristics and move to an optimum location, thus leading to potentially superior vibration control. The coupled dynamics between a single conductor and EHMVA is presented and numerical examples are carried out to investigate the performance of the proposed absorber. The findings are very promising and open a horizon of future opportunities to optimize the design of EHMVAs for superior performance.