Scavenging vibration energy directly from environments is an attractive technique for potentially powering small and/or wireless electronic devices in a smart structure and system.In this paper,a novel broadband vibration energy harvester is designed and analyzed,which consists of three cantilever beams,two magnetoelectric(ME) transducers and a magnetic circuit.A theoretical model is developed to analyze the effects of the structure parameters on the frequency response and the electrical output for achieving the optimal vibration energy harvesting performances.A prototype is fabricated and tested.The experimental results show that the harvester has a bandwidth of 7.2 Hz and an average power of 0.21 mW at an acceleration of 0.2 g(with g=9.8 ms-2).
A new adaptive variable stiffness absorber was proposed based on a smart material, magnetorheological elastomer (MRE), and its vibration control performance was investigated. Before developing the proposed absorber, the MREs were firstly fabricated by curing a mixture of 704 silicon rubber, carbonyl iron particles and a small amount of silicone oil under an external magnetic field. Then the mechanical properties of the fabricated MREs were measured. On the basis of the measured mechanical characteristics, the MRE absorber was developed and its working characteristics were also tested under various input currents and excited frequencies. Finally, the control responses of a two-degree-of-freedom dynamic system with a MRE absorber were presented under a chirp input and used to evaluate the effectiveness of the MRE absorber.
Magnetorheological elastomer （MRE） is a new kind of smart materials, the rheological properties can be controlled rapidly by the external magnetic field. It is mainly composed of rubber and micron-sized ferromagnetic particles, which forms a chain-like structure. Therefore its mechanical, electric, and magnetic properties can be changed by the applied magnetic field, which is called as the magneto-induced effect. But this effect is not remarkable enough currently for the engineering application. So it is important for material preparation to optimize parameters to enhance the magneto-induced effect. In this work, based on chain-like model, some factors influencing the magneto-induced effect of MRE were analyzed theoretically by using dipole method with the normal distribution of chain＇s angle introduced. The factors included the oblique angle of particles chains, magnetic field intensity, and shear strain, etc. Some experiments were also carried out.
