Simultaneous Vibration Absorbing and Energy Harvesting Mechanism of the Tri-Magnet Bistable Levitation Structure: Modeling and Simulation

This paper investigates efficient simultaneous vibration absorbing and energy harvesting utilizing a bistable electromagnetic vibration absorber (BEVA). The vibration absorber employs a tri-magnet levitation structure, where the magnetic mechanism between the cylindrical and ring magnets achieves the symmetric bistable characteristic. Furthermore, it is attached to the free end of a cantilever beam subject to transient external excitation. The equivalent model of the cantilever beam with the BEVA system is obtained by exploiting the extended Hamilton’ s principle, while the magnetic forces are derived based on the equivalent magnetic charge method. The dry friction of the BEVA and the mechanical damping of the cantilever beam are obtained by parametric identification of the experimental data for accurate numerical simulations. From the vibration attenuation and energy dissipation viewpoints, the performance of the absorber under transient excitation is assessed. It is observed that inter-well oscillations occur at certain excitation levels, while the energy dissipation efficiency of the BEVA is improved substantially compared to the intra-well oscillations.