Vibration damping as a result of piezoelectric energy harvesting

This paper presents a new self-powered vibration damping technique, which is an application of the enhanced synchronized switching harvesting technique. Compared with other self-powered vibration damping techniques, it not only shows its robustness (particularly facing environmental drifts), but also can harvest the energy and supply power to other electronic circuits, while does not simply dissipate the electrical energy. Experimental results show that a vibration damping of about 5 dB is achieved as a result of energy harvesting, in good agreement with the theory. In addition, the vibration damping system can be not only self-powered, but also supply power to other electronic circuits. In other words, there is a good trade-off between energy scavenging and vibration damping. Along with experimental results demonstrating the effectiveness of the ESSH implementation, we discuss the design of a device aimed at bridging the gap between research in this area and practical application. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.