A magnetic-coupled nonlinear electromagnetic generator with both wideband and high-power performance

This paper proposed a high-performance magnetic-coupled nonlinear electromagnetic generator (MNL-EMG). A high-permeability iron core is incorporated to the coil. The strong coupling between the iron core and the vibrating magnets lead to significantly improved output power and a broadened operating bandwidth. The magnetic force of the iron core to the permanent magnets and the magnetic flux density inside the iron core are simulated, and the dimension parameters of the MNL-EMG are optimized. Under acceleration of 1.5 g, the MNL-EMG can maintain high output performance in a wide frequency range of 17~30 Hz, which is 4.3 times wider than that of linear electromagnetic generator (EMG) without an iron core. The maximum output power of MNL-EMG reaches 174 mW under the optimal load of 35 Ω, which is higher than those of most vibration generators with frequency less than 30 Hz. The maximum 360 parallel-connected LEDs were successfully lit by the prototype. Moreover, the prototype has an excellent charging performance such that a 1.2 V, 900 mAh Ni-MH battery was charged from 0.95 V to 0.98 V in 240 s. Both the simulation and experiments verify that the proposed bistable EMG device based on magnetic coupling has advantages of wide operating bandwidth and high output power, which could be sufficient to power micro electronic devices.