A Horizontal Diamagnetic Levitation Based Low Frequency Vibration Energy Harvester

This paper investigates a horizontal diamagnetic levitation (HDL) system for vibration energy harvesting in contrast to the vertical diamagnetic levitation (VDL) system recently proposed by Wang et al. (2013, “A Magnetically Levitated Vibration Energy Harvester,” Smart Mater. Struct., 22(5), p. 055016). In this configuration, two large magnets, alias lifting magnets (LMs), are arranged co-axially at a distance such that in between them a magnet, alias floating magnet (FM), is passively levitated at a laterally offset equilibrium position. The levitation is stabilized in the horizontal direction by two diamagnetic plates (DPs) made of pyrolytic graphite placed on each side of the FM. This HDL configuration mitigates the limitation on the amplitude of the FM imposed in the VDL configuration and exploits the ability to tailor the geometry to meet specific applications due to its frequency tuning capability. A simple circular coil geometry is designed to replace a portion of the pyrolytic graphite plate without sacrificing the stability of the levitation for transduction. An experimental setup exhibits a weak softening frequency response and validates the theoretical findings; at an input root mean square (RMS) acceleration of 0.0434 m/s² and at a resonant frequency of 1.2 Hz, the prototype generated a RMS power of 3.6 μW with an average system efficiency of 1.93%.