Surrogate Model for Design Uncertainty Estimation of Nonlinear Electromagnetic Vibration Energy Harvester

Abstract

The paper proposes a solution to the problem of estimating the uncertainty of the output power with respect to the design parameters for an electromagnetic vibration energy harvesting converter. Due to costly utilisation of time-domain mathematical models involved in the procedure of determination of the average output power of the system, an algorithm for developing the surrogate model that enables rapid estimation of this quantity within the prescribed frequency band limits is proposed. As a result, the metamodel sensitive to the most impactful design parameters is developed using Kriging with successive refinement of the design grid for gaining the accuracy. Under operational conditions with a constant magnitude of the acceleration signal and the prescribed frequency band limits, the surrogate model enables evaluation of the average output power of the system at 105 design points in less than 2 s of computer execution time. The consistency and accuracy of the results obtained from the surrogate model is confirmed by comparison of selected results of computations with measurements carried out on the manufactured prototype. Based on the latter and the surrogate model, the confidence intervals for the design procedure were determined and the most important spread quantities were estimated, providing quantitative information on the accuracy of the design procedure developed for the considered system.