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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: EP/E044220/1
Title: Energy harvesting: vibration powered generators with non-linear compliance
Principal Investigator: Burrow, Dr SG
Other Investigators:
Champneys, Professor AR
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Department: Aerospace Engineering
Organisation: University of Bristol
Scheme: First Grant Scheme
Starts: 28 January 2008 Ends: 27 January 2011 Value (£): 197,318
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Electric Motor & Drive Systems Power Electronics
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
Energy
Related Grants:
Panel History:  
Summary on Grant Application Form
Generating power from ambient vibrations is one of a number of techniques that have been proposed to provide a renewable power source for electronic circuits. Typical applications include wireless sensors to monitor parameters inside the human body or conditions inside a large civil structure.Because of the applications vibration powered generators have to be small and it can be difficult to produce sufficient power in such a small volume unless the device is careful optimised. Vibration powered generators use a resonant mass/spring arrangement to amplify the small vibrations to a useable level and the proposed research will investigate how this resonant system behaves when the spring element has a non-linear compliance i.e. force is no longer proportional to frequency. This is important since non-linearities can occur because of manufacturing, particularly at small scales, and because of magnetic or electrostatic forces.The proposed research will provide analytical techniques to design vibration powered generators with non-linear spring elements and hence improve their performance, making them applicable in a wider variety of applications.
Key Findings
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Organisation Website: http://www.bris.ac.uk