Performance enhancement in cable vibration energy harvesting employing inerters: Full‐scale experiment

Abstract

Harvesting cable vibration energy via electromagnetic dampers has been demonstrated as potential power supplies for wireless sensor networks or semiactive control devices. However, how the inerter enhances the energy harvesting performance of the electromagnetic damper when applied to a bridge stay cable remains largely unknown. This paper presents a full-scale experimental study on harvesting the vibration energy of a 135 m-long cable using an electromagnetic inertial mass damper (EIMD). The EIMD integrates an electromagnetic damper and an inerter. A numerical model of the cable-EIMD system was also established using Matlab/Simulink for performance analysis. In the free vibration test, the EIMD could achieve the peak output power of 61.52 W and average output power of 13.80 W, when the inerter and the load resistance are optimized, considering an initial displacement of 100 mm near the mid-span of the cable. The corresponding energy harvesting efficiency was up to 25.31%. However, the energy harvesting performance of the EIMD degrades under ultra-small-amplitude vibration conditions due to the overlarge parasitic damping induced by Coulomb friction. Besides, experimental data uncover a 53.08% increase of average output power due to the inerter used, while numerical results indicate a tremendous increase of output power up to 126.1% because of assuming low parasitic damping. The EIMD with the optimal parameters (inertance, damping coefficient, and load resistance) can provide superior energy harvesting performance owing to the energy amplification mechanism induced by the inerter.

Stay cable vibration mitigation: A review

“…A prototype inertial mass damper was designed by combining electromagnetic damping and fly wheels, which was attached to a model cable, validating the improved damping effect (Wang et al, 2019c, 2019h). Full-scale experiments on a 135 m long cable further validated the performance of inertial mass dampers (Li et al, 2019c, 2020; Shen et al, 2021). Explicit approximate expressions or design methods have been provided for designing inertial mass dampers on a cable for a broad range of inertance (Li et al, 2022b), with cable sag (Di et al, 2021c; Wang et al, 2019g, 2020c) and bending rigidity (Gao et al, 2021c; Wang et al, 2019f) taken into account.…”

Energy analysis of an inerter‐enhanced floating floor structure (In‐FFS) under seismic loads

“…Using the fixed‐point theory, Shen et al. [ 27,28 ] derived simple design formulas for the tuned inerter damper (TID) when it is attached to a single‐degree‐of‐freedom system subjected to ground acceleration excitations. Luo et al.…”

“…Petrini et al [26] proposed a novel optimal TMDI design formulation to address occupants' comfort in wind-excited slender tall buildings susceptible to vortex shedding effect and to explore optimal TMDI's potential for transforming part of the wind-induced kinetic energy to usable electricity in tall buildings. Using the fixed-point theory, Shen et al [27,28] derived simple design formulas for the tuned inerter damper (TID) when it is attached to a single-degree-offreedom system subjected to ground acceleration excitations. Luo et al [29] investigated the effectiveness of incorporating inerter and base-isolation (BI) system within a parallel layout for mitigating the seismic response of storage tanks.…”

Cable vibration mitigation by using an H‐bridge‐based electromagnetic inerter damper with energy harvesting function

“…29 Among various dampers, an emerging and effective passive damper type is the inerter damper (ID), which presents a negative slope in force-displacement relationship that avoids the local locking effect at the damper location and subsequently leads to a more efficient energy dissipation performance. [30][31][32][33] Recently, Zhu et al 34 and Shen et al 35 used a physical inerter to provide inertance while adopting an energy-harvesting circuit to emulate a damping element while harvesting energy. Compared with a conventional viscous damper whose optimal damping ratio value is approximately half of its damper location distance, 8,9,36,37 an ID can potentially have a damping ratio that is four times higher.…”