Concept study of a novel energy harvesting-enabled tuned mass-damper-inerter (EH-TMDI) device for vibration control of harmonically-excited structures

Abstract

A novel dynamic vibration absorber (DVA) configuration is introduced for simultaneous vibration suppression and energy harvesting from oscillations typically exhibited by large-scale low-frequency engineering structures and structural components. The proposed configuration, termed energy harvesting-enabled tuned mass-damper-inerter (EH-TMDI) comprises a mass grounded via an in-series electromagnetic motor (energy harvester)-inerter layout, and attached to the primary structure through linear spring and damper in parallel connection. The governing equations of motion are derived and solved in the frequency domain, for the case of harmonically-excited primary structures, here modelled as damped single-degree- of-freedom (SDOF) systems. Comprehensive parametric analyses proved that by varying the mass amplification property of the grounded inerter, and by adjusting the stiffness and the damping coefficients using simple optimum tuning formulae, enhanced vibration suppression (in terms of primary structure peak displacement) and energy harvesting (in terms of relative velocity at the terminals of the energy harvester) may be achieved concurrently and at nearresonance frequencies, for a fixed attached mass. Hence, the proposed EH-TMDI allows for relaxing the trade-off between vibration control and energy harvesting purposes, and renders a dual-objective optimisation a practically-feasible, reliable task.