Dynamic analysis of a novel multilink-spring mechanism for vibration isolation and energy harvesting

Abstract

Due to technical limitations, existing vibration isolation and energy harvesting (VIEH) devices have poor performance at low frequency. This paper proposes a new multilink-spring mechanism (MLSM) that can be used to solve this problem. The VIEH performance of the MLSM under harmonic excitation and Gaussian white noise was analyzed. It was found that the MLSM has good vibration isolation performance for low-frequency isolation and the frequency band can be widened by adjusting parameters to achieve a higher energy harvesting power. By comparison with two special cases, the results show that the MLSM is basically the same as the other two oscillators in terms of vibration isolation but has better energy harvesting performance under multistable characteristics. The MLSM is expected to reduce the impact of vibration on high-precision sensitive equipment in some special sites such as subways and mines, and at the same time supply power to structural health monitoring devices.