Effects of Ortho-planar Spring Designs on the Performance of Electromagnetic VibrationEnergy Harvesters

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Abstract
The integration of ortho-planar springs in electromagnetic vibration energy harvesters offers significant advantages and serves asthe main focus of the current study. For this type of integration, the spring structure plays a significant role during the design processof the electromagnetic energy harvester due to its effect on the harvester’s frequency response and thus the harvester’s performance.In this paper, three different ortho-planar spring topologies are under investigation. These include rectangular, radial, and angledtopologies. We utilize a fully automated optimization procedure with the help of an optimization algorithm implemented in Pythonto find the most promising configurations for each topology. Subsequently, these design candidates have been fabricated andassembled into electromagnetic vibration harvesters for experimental evaluation. The results demonstrate that the spring topologysignificantly affects the nonlinear stiffness of the harvesters. Rectangular topologies exhibit the most nonlinear behavior, whileangled topologies show the most linear behavior. Differences in linear and nonlinear stiffness within each topology group alsoinfluence the harvester’s overall frequency response. The peak average output power at 0.8g up-sweep input acceleration is foundto be similar across all topologies, with values of 4.76 ± 0.68mW, 4.89 ± 0.51mW, and 5.1 ± 0.56mW for rectangular, radial, andangled configurations, respectively. This equivalence indicates that while the choice of optimized configuration has a limited effecton the peak power of the harvesters, it remains critical to ensuring system reliability and performance predictability. Specifically, thehigher data dispersion observed in the rectangular layouts reveals a heightened sensitivity to geometric deviations compared to theradial and angled configurations. In addition, the choice of spring topology heavily impacts the frequency response, performance,and stability of electromagnetic energy harvesters. Furthermore, the fabrication-induced tolerances also play a crucial role in infinal device characterization.

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