Assessment of Structural Performance and Integrity for Vibration-based Energy Harvester in Frequency Domain

A vibration-based energy harvester (VEH) utilizes vibrations originated from various structures and specifically maximizes the displacement of its moving parts, using the resonance between the frequency of external vibration loads from the structure and the natural frequency of VEH to improve power production efficiency. This study presents the procedure to evaluate the structural performance and structural integrity of VEH utilized in a railway vehicle under frequency domain. First of all, a structural performance test was performed to identify the natural frequency and assess the structural response in frequency domain. Then, the static structural analysis was carried out using FE analysis to investigate the failure critical locations (FCLs) and effect of resonance. Finally, we conducted a frequency response analysis to identify the structural response and investigate the structural integrity in frequency domain. Based on these results, the authors assessed the structural performance and integrity of VEHs in two versions.