Performance of a modified magnetostrictive energy harvester in mechanical vibration.

The field of harvesting electrical energy from ambient vibration has grown with rapid interest. Perpetual source of electrical energy can be extracted from structural vibrations. The paper deals with a technology for scavenging electricity from vibration using iron-gallium alloy. This alloy offers high ductile property and the effect of inverse magnetostriction is also quite high. In this paper, a bending type magnetostrictive prototype energy harvester has been considered. Volume of the used material is 7 × 2 × 42 mm3. Forced & free vibration characteristics have been examined on this prototype. Maximum conversion efficiency of 49% has been achieved at input frequency of 30 Hz.