An Innovative Design of a Smart Ring-shaped Energy Harvester that can Maximize the Conversion of Destructive Vibration to Useful Electricity and Prolong the life of Machines

Description

This project is aimed to design an innovative, smart and adaptive ring-shaped energy harvester. It can absorb destructive vibration generated from a rotating machine and then convert the vibration into useful electricity for powering up wireless sensors. The harvester uses smart materials like piezoelectric patches and magnetorheological elastomer to re-cycle waste energy and adaptively tune the harvester’s resonant frequency for maximum energy conversion respectively. The research on ring shape energy harvester is the first time proposed here. The theory and dynamic model for the ring harvester will be derived so that vital parameters can be determined for optimizing the operation condition of harvester and maximizing the electricity output to wireless sensors. Hence, wireless sensors become self-sustainable in power and do not require battery. Machines will run longer and quieter as their components will suffer less destructive vibration. In long run, there will be less machine breakdown and better living environment.