Article

Large-scale vibration energy harvesting

Journal of Intelligent Material Systems

and Structures
24(11) 14051430
The Author(s) 2013
Reprints and permissions:
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DOI: 10.1177/1045389X13486707
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Lei Zuo and Xiudong Tang

Abstract
Nowadays, harvesting energy from vibration is one of the most promising technologies. However, the majority of current researches obtain 10 mW to 100 mW power, which has only limited applications in self-powered wireless sensors
and low-power electronics. In fact, the vibrations in some situations can be very large, for example, the vibrations of tall
buildings, long bridges, vehicle systems, railroads, ocean waves, and even human motions. With the global concern on
energy and environmental issues, energy harvesting from large-scale vibrations is more attractive and becomes a
research frontier. This article is to provide a timely and comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art on the large-scale
vibration energy harvesting, ranging from 1 W to 100 kW or more. Subtopics include energy assessment from large
vibrations, piezoelectric materials and electromagnetic transducers, motion transmission and magnification mechanisms,
power electronics, and vibration control. The relevant applications discussed in this article include vibration energy harvesting from human motion, vehicles, transportations, and civil structures. The unique challenges and future research
directions of large-scale vibration energy harvesting are also discussed.
Keywords
Energy harvesting, control, piezoelectric, electromagnetic, vibration

Introduction
With the global energy crisis and environment concerns, many technologies in energy harvesting, such as
solar, wind, geothermal, and hydraulic power plants or
farms, have been developed. Since vibration exists
everywhere, such as the vibration of floor and wall,
machines, pumps, vehicle chassis, railway train or tracks,
and human motions, etc. it becomes a good alternative
energy source and receives more and more attention in
recent years. The research has resulted in a wealth of the
literature and some promising applications, such as lowpower electronics and self-powered wireless sensors
(Chalasani and Conrad, 2008). Hundreds of articles have
been published in the past 5 years (Figure 1), including
over 10 review articles (Collins, 2006; Galhardi et al.,
2008; Paradiso and Starner, 2005; Park et al., 2008;
Saadon and Sidek, 2011; Sodano and Inman, 2004). So
far, all the review articles and the majorities of the
research on vibration energy harvesting focus on the
small scale (\100 mW). In real world, the vibrations can
be very large, for example, the vibrations of buildings or
bridges, vehicle systems, ocean waves, even human
motions. Harvesting large amount of vibration energy
promises more meaningful applications. Though relative
few, there are still some interesting initiatives in the
research laboratories and industry on harvesting vibration energy on the order of Watts or even more. The

purpose of this article is to review the state-of-the-art and

challenges of energy harvesting from vibrations, with the
emphasis on the large-scale vibration energy harvesting.
A typical vibration energy harvesting system consists
of a mechanical system with external excitation, a
transducer that converts the vibration energy into electric energy, mechanisms for motion transmission and
magnification, power electronics and energy storage
elements, and energy management and control strategies, as shown in Figure 2. This article is organized
according to the components of such a typical vibration energy harvesting system. First, the assessment of
large-scale vibration harvesting potential from different
sources is conducted in section Power assessment of
large-scale vibration. Then, different transducers are
summarized in section Transducers, where two of the
most popular transducers, piezoelectric materials and
electromagnetic transducers, are reviewed and compared. In section Motion and magnification mechanisms, several mechanisms for motion transmission and
Department of Mechanical Engineering, State University of New York at
Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY, USA
Corresponding author:
Lei Zuo, Department of Mechanical Engineering, State University of New
York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794, USA.
Email: lei.zuo@stonybrook.edu

1406

Figure 1. Increasing research interest on vibration energy

harvesting indicated by the numbers of relevant articles in the
databases engineering village (EI) and web of science (Science
Citation Index (SCI)).

magnification, which plays important roles in largescale vibration energy harvesting, are summarized.
Power electronic circuits, energy management, and control strategies are reviewed in sections Energy harvesting circuits and power management and Vibration
control. The existing challenges and future research
directions are presented in section Challenges and
future directions.

Power assessment of large-scale vibration

The vibrations could be large in many situations. If the
energy in large-scale vibration can be successfully harvested, it can serve as either an on-site generator or a
power source to feed the grid. In this section, the facts
of available energy in different vibration systems will
be analyzed and summarized. The feasibility of harvesting significant amount of vibration energy out of those
systems is also discussed.

Harvestable power in regenerative vehicle

suspensions
Figure 3 shows the energy flow of a 2.5L 2005 Camry,
where 1/5 of the fuel energy is converted into mechanical energy, and less than half of mechanical energy is
transfer to the driving wheel (Bandivadekar et al.,
2008). Typically, only 10%16% of the available fuel

Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures 24(11)

energy is used to drive the vehicle, which is to overcome
the resistance from road friction and air drag (US
Department of Energy, 2011). There are three opportunities to improve the fuel efficiency: recovery of waste
heat, regenerative braking, and regenerative shock
absorbers. More information on energy harvesting
from the heat waste of the vehicles can be found in
comprehensive review articles by Bell (2008) and Yang
and Francis (2009). Through the vast investment in the
past two decades, regenerative brakes have been successfully commercialized in many hybrid vehicles and
greatly increased the fuel efficiency by recovering
energy during braking. Energy harvesting from vehicle
suspensions is still in the research and development
(R&D) stage.
When the vehicle travels on the road, the road
roughness, accelerations, decelerations, and unevenness
will excite the undesired vibration. Traditionally, oil
shock absorbers are used in parallel with the suspension springs to ensure the ride comfort, road handling,
and safety, by dissipating the undesired vibration
energy into waste heat. On the other hand, active suspension has been demonstrated for full-scale vehicles
with very impressive performance, for example, by
Bose Corporation (Rani, 2005). However, the power
consumption, cost-effectiveness, and reliability are of
serious concern, and active suspension is barely used in
automotive industry. Regenerative shock absorbers
have been proposed to convert the kinetic energy of the
undesired vibration into useful electricity and to reduce
the vibration. Although a few researchers have already
looked into the potential of energy harvesting in the
vehicle suspensions (Goldner et al., 2001; Kawamoto et
al., 2007; Martins et al., 2006; Zhang et al., 2007), the
numbers vary in large range, from negligible 46 W
(Zhang et al., 2007) to unreasonably high 7500 W
(Goldner et al., 2001) in a passenger car.
Zuo and Zhang (2011) assessed the energy potential
of vehicle suspension systems through an integrated
mathematical modeling of roadvehicleharvester system, which was also verified by road tests. In this
model, the excitation from road irregularity is modeled
as a stationary random process, where the displacement
power spectral densities (PSDs) of different roads are
suggested by the international standard organization
(ISO 2631-1:1997, 1997), as shown in Figure 4. The
concept of system H2 norm (Zhou, 1996) is used to

Figure 2. Typical components of a vibration energy harvesting system.

Zuo and Tang

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Figure 3. Vehicle energy flows of a 2.5L 2005 Camry (Bandivadekar et al., 2008).

Figure 4. Integrated roadvehicleharvester modeling.

obtain mean value of the power dissipated by the conventional shock absorbers. The conclusion is that for a
middle-sized passenger car (3500 lb) with four shock
absorbers, average powers of 100, 400, and 1600 W are
available for harvesting while driving 60 mile/h on
Class B (good), Class C (average), and Class D (poor)
roads, respectively. And the energy potential for trucks,
railcars, and off-road vehicles is on the order of 110
kW. The theoretical modeling is validated by road test
using a super compact vehicle, as shown in Figure 5.
Assuming 75% energy harvesting efficiency, the
regenerative shock absorbers of a middle-sized passenger car can recover 300 W electricity on the average
(Class C) road at 60 mile/h. Such 300 W of electricity
must not be underestimated. As noted in a general
motors (GMs) article (Yang, 2009), the typical electricity usage of a vehicle is about 250350 W with all
optional systems turned off, which is currently generated by the alternator driven by the engine crank shaft.
The alternator has a typical power capacity of 500600
W and an efficiency of 55% (Bradfield, 2008).
Considering the efficiency of engines and alternators,
300 W of electrical power means about 1800 W of
petroleum fuel power.
The average energy usage of fossil cars is 80 kWh
per 100 km (62.5 miles), while the one of electric or
hybrid is less than 20 kWh per 100 km (MacKay, 2009),
which means the energy consumption rates of fossil cars

and electric cars are 76.8 and 19.2 kW at 60 mile/h,

respectively. Therefore, the 300 W of electricity harvested (equivalent 1800 W fuel power) means 2.4%9%
increase of fuel efficiency for the vehicles (calculated as
1800 W/76.8 kW1800 W/19.2 kW). This estimation is
consistent with the literature in the thermoelectric waste
heat recovery, for example, 390 W means 4% fuel efficiency for a BMW (Fairbanks, 2011).

Harvestable power from civil structures

Another promising alternative energy technology is to
harvest vibration energy from civil structures. Civil
structures, such as tall buildings, communication
towers, and long-span bridges, are very susceptible to
the dynamic loadings of wind, earthquake, traffic, and
human motions, and thus, large vibration exists in
these civil structures. Large vibration amplitudes can
damage the structures or the secondary components or
cause discomfort to its human occupants (Kareem et
al., 1999). For example, the Tacoma Narrow Bridge
collapsed from wind-induced vibration 4 months after
opening in 1940 (Scott, 2001), as shown in Figure 6. In
1972, wind-induced vibration also caused more than 65
panels of window glass, weighing 500 pounds each, to
fall and crash on the sidewalks hundreds of feet below
the Hancock Tower in Boston (Schwartz, 2001). Those
two examples show that the wind-induced vibration

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Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures 24(11)

(b)
0.4

700

Middle size car 3550lb,

Four shock absorbers

0.3

600
500

400W

0.2

400
300
200

0.1

100
0

0
20 40 60 80 100
Vehicle speed (mph)
Instant power at one absorber (W)

(c)

500
450
400
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0

Average power potenal (W)

RMS suspension velocity (m/s)

(a)

Stony Brook campus road

Sensor

Super compact car 2400lb, 25mph

One of the four absorbers

10

20 30 40
Time (Sec)

50

60

Figure 5. (a) Predicted suspension velocity and harvesting power potential for a middle-sized passenger car on average road (Class
C), (b) recorded power potential from one shock absorber of a super compact vehicle at 25 mile/h on Stony Brook campus road
and (c) Experimental setup (Zuo and Zhang, 2011).
RMS: root mean square.

Figure 6. Wind-induced torsional vibration of Tacoma Narrow

Bridge in 1940 (Scott, 2001).

could be huge. Figure 7 compares the sizes of some tall

buildings with the 100 kW1.5 MW wind turbines,
which gives a sense of wind forces and power acting on
the tall buildings.
Modern buildings and bridges are constructed with
steel or concrete, which have very low inherent damping. Typical damping ratios are z = 0.5%1%. And

the vibration amplitude at the resonant frequency can

be 50100 times larger than the static deformation
(quality factor fix this Q = 1/2z = 50100). Hence, the
supplemental damping becomes the most important
strategy to control the vibration. This includes viscous
fluid dampers, viscoelastic dampers, metallic yield dissipaters, friction dampers, and tuned mass dampers
(TMDs). The vibration energy can be converted into
electricity, by replacing the viscous dissipative elements
with energy transducers. Among all these energy dissipaters, the TMD and its variants (tuned liquid damper,
and so on) become increasingly popular and compose
the greatest percentage of the supplemental damping
systems currently in use (Housner et al., 1997; Kareem
et al., 1999; Soong and Spencer, 2002). The TMD,
which is composed of a mass up to several hundred or
thousand tons connected to the structure with spring
and viscous dissipative devices (VDDs), has been
installed in many buildings around the word, for example, Citigroup Tower in New York (410 ton TMD,
1978 installation), John Hancock Tower in Boston (600
ton TMD, 1977), Trump World Tower in New York
(600 ton, 2001), Chicago Spire (1300 ton, in construction), Taipei 101 Tower (730 ton, 2004), Crystal Tower
in Japan (540 ton, 1990), Chifley Tower in Sydney (400
ton, 1993), BronxWhitestone Bridge in New York (94

Zuo and Tang

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Figure 7. Size comparison of some civil structures with wind turbines (Ni et al., 2011).

Figure 8. Typical implementations of TMDs in structures: (a) 730 ton of metal ball (18# diameter) suspended in Taipei 101, (b) 410
ton of concrete block (30#3 30#3 9#) on the top of Citigroup tower, and (c) simplified model of the classic TMD.
TMD: tuned mass damper.

ton, 1988), and many others (Gamble et al., 2009; Sun

et al., 1995). These TMDs can reduce the vibration
response of the structures by 40%60% via energy dissipation. They are typically either suspended with pendulums (including multistage pendulums or inverted
pendulums) or supported with bearings (mechanical,
hydraulic, or rubber) with mechanical guides on the
top of the roof or the top floor. Figure 8 shows such
two typical implementations.
Instead of dissipating the vibration energy, Tang and
Zuo (2010, 2011b) proposed regenerative TMD to harvest the vibration energy, where simultaneous energy

harvesting and vibration control have been demonstrated on a three-storey building prototype. Ni et al.
(2011) estimated the power potential that is available
for harvesting in typical buildings, by considering the
wind dynamics and buildingTMD dynamics. It is
shown that more than 85 kW of power is available for
harvesting from 76-storey building with TMD in high
wind events of 13.5 m/s at a standard height of 10 m. In
the state of arts, oil-based VDDs are used in the TMDs.
Such a large power rate already creates a lot of challenges, and forced liquid cooling or the heat-resistant
design has to be used. Figure 9 shows the energy

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Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures 24(11)

1/8$3/8$ track deflection (Bowness et al., 2007;
Farritor et al., 2006; Igwemezie, 2007; Phillips, 2011).
The frequency at which the track deflects depends on
the distance between the two bogies of the train.
Usually, the freight trains have different cart lengths,
so the distance between bogies is not uniform.
The frequency is around 0.61.8 Hz calculated
by assuming that the train is moving at a speed of
2575 mile/h.
The average power available on the railway track site
due to the moving train can be estimated using the following equation

Figure 9. Power dissipated by one of the eight VDDs in the

TMD of Taipei 101 in wind-induced vibration (Haskett et al.,
2004).
VDD: viscous dissipative device; TMD: tuned mass damper.

dissipated by one of the eight oil dampers (VDDs) in

the TMD on Taipei 101 in a wind-induced vibration
(Haskett et al., 2004). We can see that the estimation
agrees well with the recorded data.
It should be noted that such dual functional generators are not limited by TMDs or distributed dampers linked in a truss. Other examples include
integration of electromechanical dampers in core and
outrigger structural systems commonly employed for
tall buildings at the interbuilding connections and at
connections of the building core to outer tube/framing systems.

Energy harvesting potential from railway tracks

When the train moves on the track, the track will
deflect vertically, as illustrated in Figure 10(a). Railcars
can weigh from 30 ton (empty) to 140 ton (loaded)
each. A typical freight train exerts a load around
20,00030,000 pounds on the track surface and induces

Pavg =

NFD
FD
=
T
DT

where N is the number of wheels passing through, D is

the track deflection under wheel load, F is the normal
force exerted by the wheel on the track, T is the total
time taken by the train to pass by, and DT is the average time for each wheel to pass by.
Assuming that a four-wheel railcar has 100 ton
weight and 80 feet length, the four wheels will pass over
in 1.36 s (DT = 0:34) at a train speed of 40 mile/h. The
average power potential will be about 2 kW under 1/4$
track deflection according to equation (1). If 5% of the
support force is provided to a harvester at the trackside,
the harvestable energy from up and down track motion
will be 200 W. This amount of power is sufficient for
most of the trackside electric facilities. Typically, the
light-emitting diode (LED) signal lights require a power
of 810 W, grade-crossing gate requires a power of
150200 W, and axle counter requires a power of 100
150 W (Penamalli, 2011). It should be noted that this is
just a ballpark estimation. The actual power available
depends on the speed of the train, the weight of the
train, the type of railway track, ballast, road foundation, and so on.

Figure 10. Railroad track vibration: vertical track deflection (Bowness et al., 2007; Igwemezie, 2007).

Zuo and Tang

1411

Figure 11. Available energy from human activities (Starner and

Paradiso, 2004).

Energy harvesting from human motion

The potential of harvesting energy from human activities has been reviewed by Starner and Paradiso (2004).
The available energy for harvesting from different
human activities is summarized in Figure 11. As can be
seen from Figure 11 there are many sources we can harvest energy from human, including walking, arm
motion, finger motion, breathing, blood pressure, and
so on. It should be noted that most of them are on the
small scale, less than 0.5 W, except for energy harvesting from walking. Examples of successfully harvesting
energy over 1 W from human motion have been
reported (Li et al., 2008; Rome et al., 2005) and will be
reviewed in the following sections.

Energy harvesting from ocean wave

Another important renewable energy source is the
ocean wave energy, which has attracted many researchers due to its great potential. The worlds ocean wave

(a)

energy has the potential of approximately 800080000TWh every year (Boud, 2003). According to
Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI, 2011), the
total available wave energy resource along the U.S.
continental shelf edge, is estimated to be 2,640 TWh/yr
while the total extractable wave energy resource yields
a total extractable resource along the U.S. continental
shelf edge of 1,170 TWh/yr, which includes 250 TWh/
yr for the West Coast, 160 TWh/yr for the East Coast,
60 TWh/yr for the Gulf of Mexico, 620 TWh/yr for
Alaska, 80 TWh/yr for Hawaii, and 20 TWh/yr for
Puerto Rico. Theoretically, if all the extractable energy
can be harvested, it can feed 1/4 of the nations need.
Generally, ocean wave energy extraction technologies are utilized to convert the kinetic energy from surface waves into electricity or make it available directly
for other purposes. Modern research on wave energy
extraction technologies began in earnest following the
oil crises of the early 1970s (Drew et al., 2009; Falcao,
2010). Broadly, there are three main types of wave
energy technologies: (1) float-type wave energy converters, including point absorber (Figure 12-a), attenuator
and terminator, which use a float, buoy, or pitching
device to tap the oscillating force of the waves to
generate electricity; (2) oscillating water column
(Figure 12-b), in which water enters a chamber and
forces the trapped air though an opening connected to
a turbine; and (3) overtopping device, with a reservoir
above mean water level from which wave water flows
through one or more conventional low-head hydraulic
turbines. The energy converting unit, known as power
take-off (PTO), is the part in the ocean wave harvester
to convert the wave kinetic energy into electricity.
PTOs are commonly adopted in the forms of: hydraulic (Henderson, 2006; Cargo, et al., 2011), linear generator (Mei, 2012), rotational turbine (Delaure, 2003).

Transducers
Traditionally, the vibration energy is dissipated into
heat waste by the damping elements of the systems.

(b)

Figure 12. A diagram of point absorber type ocean energy harvester (PowerBuoy of Ocean Power Technologies, Inc) and ocean
energy harvester (LIMPET of Voith Hydro Wavegen Limited).

1412

Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures 24(11)

Figure 13. Two modes of piezoelectric materials when used for vibration energy harvesting.

Rather than dissipating the vibration energy into heat

waste by damping elements, the transducers in vibration energy harvesting system can convert the mechanical energy into electric energy. Various transducers
have been investigated for the vibration energy harvesting, including piezoelectric materials (Galhardi et al.,
2008; Sodano and Inman, 2004), linear and rotational
electromagnetic motors (Rome et al., 2005), electrostatic generators (Mitcheson et al., 2004), and dielectric
generators (Kornbluh et al., 2002). Among these transducers, the piezoelectric materials and electromagnetic
machines have more potential for large-scale vibration
energy harvesting. In some situations, where the vibration mitigation of the primary structure is concerned,
piezoelectric materials and electromagnetic motors can
also serve as actuators simultaneously for the purpose
of active or regenerative vibration control, and thus,
the power flow is bidirectional, as shown in Figure 2.
Although both piezoelectric materials and electromagnetic motors have been used in vibration energy
harvesting, they have different features. Piezoelectric
material is a force- or stress-induced transducer, while
electromagnetic motor is a velocity-induced transducer.
Hence, piezoelectric material is more suitable for vibration with large force and small deformation (due to limited strain range). Electromagnetic motor is preferred
in the situations where vibration has large velocity or
amplitude. So far, electromagnetic motors have been
found more as the transducers for large-scale energy
harvesting. They have been used to harvest energy from
vehicle suspension and buildings. On the other hand,
piezoelectric materials have larger energy density (Chen
et al., 2006) and are more suitable for the applications
where the space or weight is a concern. In addition,
electromagnetic motor usually produces a low voltage,
while piezoelectric materials normally generate a very
high voltage, so they have different requirements on
power electronic circuits.

Piezoelectric vibration harvesters

Piezoelectric material is one of the most widely used
smart materials. It can deform when certain voltage is

applied on the surface. On the other hand, it can generate voltage or charges on its surface when a force or
pressure is exerted on it. While the first characteristic
has been used for actuator applications, such as piezoelectric stacks or benders, the second characteristic can
be used for sensor applications, such as accelerometers,
microphones, load cells (Mirzaeifar et al., 2008), or to
harvest energy from vibration. The governing electromechanical equations for piezoelectric materials can be
expressed by equation (2)


 
S
s
=
D
d

d
e

 
s
E

where S and s are strain and stress, respectively; s is

compliance; D is electric displacement (charge per unit
area); E is electric field (volts per unit length); d is piezoelectric coefficient; and e is dielectric constant.
When used as energy harvester, the piezoelectric
material can work in d31 or d33 mode, as shown in
Figure 13, where tp is the thickness of piezoelectric
materials or the distance between electrodes in the
polarization direction and A is the area of conductive
electrodes. The 31 mode is usually seen in piezoelectric
film, where the electric field is perpendicular to the
direction of mechanical strain; the 33 mode often
appears as piezoelectric stacks where both electric field
and strain are in the poling direction. When working as
energy harvester, the piezoelectric transducer can be
modeled as an alternating current (AC) voltage source
with a capacitor in series, as shown in Figure 14(a).
Based on Thevenins and Nortons theorem, it can also
be modeled as an AC current source with a capacitor
in parallel, as shown in Figure 14(b).
When the piezoelectric material is open circuit, there
will be no charge displacement and D is equal to 0.
From the relation between electric field and strain in
equation (2), we can get the open-circuit voltage generated by the piezoelectric material expressed by equation
(3)
Voc =  E  tp = 

d  s  tp
=  g  s  tp
e

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Figure 14. Modeling of piezoelectric materials as energy

harvesters: (a) voltage source and (b) current source.

where g is the voltage constant, and related with the

piezoelectric coefficient d by equation (4)
d =e  g

For the second modeling, the short-circuited current

can be obtained by shoring the electrodes of piezoelectric material. In this case, E is 0, and the electric displacement can be obtained from equation (2) as
D=d  s

Hence, the short circuit current is obtained as equation (5), which is in proportion to the derivative of the
stress
isc = D_  A = d  s_  A

Or a short circuit electric charge proportional to the

stress
Qsc = d  s  A

Many types of piezoelectric materials with different

properties can be used as the transducers (Galhardi et
al., 2008). The most popular piezoelectric materials are
lead zirconate titanate (PZT) ceramic and polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) polymer. PZT ceramic has large
electromechanical coupling factors, typically k31 =
0.34 and k33 = 0.69 (k31 is the factor for electric field

in direction 3 and longitudinal vibrations in direction 1;

k33 is the factor for electric field in direction 3 and longitudinal vibrations in direction 3), which means it is
able to convert 34% and 69% of mechanical energy in
the piezoelectric material into electric energy. PVDF is
more flexible and sensitive (Shenck and Paradiso, 2001;
Starner and Paradiso, 2004); however, the electromechanical converting coefficient is much smaller, k31 =
0.12 and k33 = 0.15. Single crystal piezoelectric materials have also been used for its high energy density,
high-energy converting efficiency, and large operational
temperature range (Badel et al., 2006). In general, the
piezoelectric materials have relatively small strain,
which prevents their direct application in largeamplitude vibrations. On the other hand, this is also
one of the advantages of piezoelectric materials, in
situations where small deformation is preferred, for
example, energy harvesting from human walk (Shenck
and Paradiso, 2001; Starner and Paradiso, 2004), where
large deformation may have effect on walking gait and
cause discomfort to the walker.
Since one piezoelectric ceramic wafer can only generate limited amount of power due to small deformation,
the output power and the efficiency could be improved
by stacking them together or group them into arrays.
Research & Development Center of JR East Group
(East Japan Railway Company, 2008) developed a
piezoelectric arraybased power-generating floor,
which has been tested at Tokyo Stations Marunouchi
North Exit (Figure 15). This power-generating floor
could harvest 10,000 W s/day, which can lighten a 100
W bulb for about 80 min, that is to say, it harvests average power of 5.6 W in 24 h. However, after the third
week of the experimental period (a total of 800,000 people passing), production of electricity decreased due to
a degradation in durability. Also using stack configuration, Antaki et al. (1995) developed a regenerative shoes
using piezoelectric ceramic, for the power supply of
artificial organs. By arranging the piezoelectric materials in stack and applying force magnification

Figure 15. Power generating floor: (a) piezoelectric energy harvesting stacks and (b) experiment in Tokyo Stations Marunouchi
North Exit (East Japan Railway Company, 2008).

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Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures 24(11)

where ke is the back electromotive voltage coefficient of
the electromagnetic motor. Meanwhile, the current flow
inside the motor coil will induce an electromotive force
proportional to the current, which serves as the damping force for the mechanical system

Proof mass
Structure

Piezoelectric material

f d = kt i

Figure 16. Piezoelectric material working in bending mode

when mounted on a cantilever beam.

mechanism, an average of 0.85 W energy is claimed

during the normal walk of a 75 kg human, without
causing much discomfort to the walking gait.
Another important configuration to induce stress or
stain to piezoelectric material is realized by mounting it
to cantilever beam with a proof mass at the end (Arms
et al., 2005; Ferrari et al., 2006; Johnson et al., 2006),
as shown in Figure 16, with the piezoelectric material
working in bending mode. Based on this configuration,
Arms et al. (2005) developed piezoelectric material
based energy harvester for a wireless sensor with low
power consumption. With a 250 g proof mass attached
to a 50-mm-long cantilever beam, the energy harvester
delivered up to 2 mW under low-level vibration conditions. In this configuration, the cantilever beam operates at the first natural frequency. The resonance can
be used to magnify the vibration and hence improve
the energy harvesting efficiency.
Piezoelectric materials are also used directly without
stack or cantilevered configuration. For example,
Shenck and Paradiso (2001) built energy harvesting
shoes with its removable insole embedded with piezoelectric materials and can generate electricity when it is
flattened or bended during human walk. However, the
average energy harvested by this device is very low (1.8
mW), with a peak power of 60 mW. By replacing the
traditional straps of the backpack with the ones made
of the PVDF, Granstrom et al. (2007) developed a
regenerative backpack, which can harvest energy at the
average rate of 45.6 mW.

Electromagnetic transducers
Besides piezoelectric materials, electromagnetic motors
are also often used in vibration energy harvesting, especially when the vibration magnitude is large.
Electromagnetic motor can act as an actuator and a
harvester at the same time, capable of bidirectional
power flow. The relative motion between the stator and
mover of the motor can induce a voltage em in the coils,
which is proportional to the relative velocity of stator
and mover v
em = ke v

where kt is back electromotive force constant of electromagnetic motor.

The electromagnetic motor can be modeled as voltage source in series with the inherent inductance and
resistor of the motor. If the inductor Lm of the motor is
small and the two electrodes of the electromagnetic
motor are shunted with a resistor R, the electromotive
force will appear as an ideal viscous damping force
fd =

ke kt
v
R + Rm

10

where Rm is the resistance of coils of the electromagnetic motor. And in this case, the electric energy is
dissipated by the resistor into heat waste (PalomeraArias, 2005). Pure resistance load also provides a
method to measure and estimate the potential amount
of energy in the energy harvesting system (Gupta et
al., 2006), although the practical loads are not always
pure resistive. On the other hand, when the electromagnetic transducer is used as passive vibration damper, the vibration performance can be further
improved by shunting the damper with resistor, capacitor, and inductor network (Fleming, 2002; Hagood
and Flotow, 1991; Hollkamp, 1994). Rather than dissipating the electric energy into heat waste, we can
replace the resistor with a charging circuit and energy
storage device to store the electric energy. The abovementioned analysis and modeling are for linear electromagnetic motors. Similar relations can be obtained
for the rotational electromagnetic motors with permanent magnets.
Actually, electromagnetic motors have been used
more often in large-scale vibration energy harvesting.
Energy recovery from vehicle suspension is such an
example. Instead of dissipating the vibration energy
into heat waste using shock absorbers, the energy can
be harvested, meanwhile reducing the vibration (Boldea
and Nasar, 1997; Gupta et al., 2006; Nakano et al.,
2003; Zuo et al., 2011c).

Direct drive linear electromagnetic generator. For a tubular

linear motor, when the coil moves at a velocity perpendicular to the magnetic field of flux intensity Br, the
induced open-circuit voltage and the maximum power
in the coil (short circuit) can be obtained as (Zuo et al.,
2011c)

Zuo and Tang

1415

Figure 17. Linear energy harvesters with radial and axial

magnets and highly magnetic conductive casing.

2pBr vz Dc Ac
p
3d 2

11

p2 sB2r v2z Dc Ac
p
P=
2 3

12

V=

Figure 18. Self-powered MR damper (Chen and Liao, 2012).

MR: magnetorheological.

where d is the diameter of the wire; Dc is the average

diameter of the coils; Ac is the cross-sectional area of
the coil and wire, respectively; and s is the electric
conductivity of the wire material. We see that the output voltage is inversely proportional to the square of
the wire diameter, and the maximum power will only
depend on the total volume (DcAc) of conducting
material in the coils. Equation (12) indicates that the
power is proportional to the B2r and v2z , thus suggests
two ways to increase the power, namely, increasing
the magnetic flux intensity B and amplifying the
motion vz .
Zuo et al. (2011c) developed a linear energy harvester prototype and showed that average power of 16
W can be achieved by one harvester at suspension velocity of 0.25 m/s, using axial magnets and spacers. A
high magnetic conductive steel casing, which moves
together with the magnet assembly without introducing
eddy current effect, is added to further increase the
magnetic flux density. Tang et al. (2011) investigated
on the parameters of the magnet thickness/diameter
ratio and coil thickness of the linear energy harvester
and proposed a configuration using both radial and
axial magnets to achieve significantly higher power
density, as shown in Figure 17.
Bose Corporation (Rani, 2005) spent over 20 years
to develop a unique active-controlled vehicle suspension system with high-speed linear electromagnetic
motor, which can significantly improve the passengers comfort and the maneuverability of the vehicle.
Together with regenerative switching power amplifiers
of bidirectional power flow ability, the linear electromagnetic motors are also used to recover the part of
vibration energy, and thus, a reduction of the power
consumption in the active control by 1/3 has been

claimed (Rani, 2005). Chen and Liao (2012) developed a self-powered and self-sensing magnetorheological (MR) damper, where the power source of MR
damper is the integrated linear electromagnetic motor,
as shown in Figure 18. In addition, several researchers
also developed linear electromagnetic eddy current
dampers (Ebrahimi et al., 2008; Palomera-Arias,
2005; Zuo et al., 2011a). Though energy harvesting is
not explored in the literature of eddy current dampers,
some idea therein can be extended for the linear electromagnetic harvester design.
Rotational electromagnetic motors. Although linear electromagnetic motors have the advantage of being easily
and reliably integrated into most existing vibration systems without the requirement for transmission mechanism, their efficiency is relative low and their size is still
large, because of the relative low vibration velocity.
Hence, rotational electromagnetic motors, including
direct current (DC) and AC permanent magnet motors,
are adopted in vibration energy harvesting. Appropriate
motion transmissions are needed to convert the linear
motion into rotational motion, which we will discuss in
section Motion and magnification mechanisms.
Using the rotational motor as a generator, Rome
et al. (2005) developed a backpack-driven energy harvesting system (Figure 19), which can generate power
up to 7.4 W with little extra metabolic energy. This
device also harvests the energy from normal human
walk, and it is much more efficient compared with the
energy harvesting shoes (Shenck and Paradiso, 2001)
or the backpack (Granstrom et al, 2007) based on
piezoelectric transducers, as we mentioned earlier.
Electromagnetic motor is also used in vibration energy

1416

Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures 24(11)

Figure 19. Regenerative backpack, harvesting energy from human walk, 7.8 W (Rome et al., 2005).

harvesting from building structures (Scruggs, 1999,

2004; Tang and Zuo, 2011b). For example, Scruggs
(1999, 2004) analyzed the possibility of developing this
kind of regenerative actuator and presented a regenerative force actuation (RFA) network consisting of multiple actuators distributed throughout a structural
system to reduce the vibration of the structure, where
some actuators can harvest the mechanical energy from
the vibration, while others reinject a portion of that
energy back into the structure at other location to
reduce the vibration.

Motion and magnification mechanisms

As seen from equations (3) and (8), the stress in the
piezoelectric material and the relative velocity between
the movers and stators of electromagnetic transducers
are important for the power output of the piezoelectric
and
electromagnetic
transducers,
respectively.
Therefore, there is an opportunity to improve the
energy harvesting performance by designing the motion
mechanism to magnify the force or the vibration velocity or changing one type of motion to another. It
should be noted that by adding these mechanisms, we
will introduce extra dynamics into existing system,
which should be taken into account in the system
design and analysis.

Motion and force magnification

Motion magnification mechanism can be used to
increase the efficiency of the electromagnetic motor
based energy harvesting system. It may have the same
effect when increasing the motor constants ke and kt
since when a magnification mechanism with the ratio

of M is adopted, the induced electric voltage will be M

times
em =  Mke v

13

At the same time, the back electromotive force will

be M times compared with the one without mechanism
Fd =  Mkt i

14

From equations (13) and (14), we can find that the

motion magnification M has influence on both the
induced voltage and dynamics. In this section, we will
review different mechanisms, which have the potential
to be used in energy harvesting system.
Gears are very convenient in magnifying or reducing
the rotational speed or force. In energy harvesting from
vibration, it is used to magnify the displacement and
velocity in order to improve the output power and efficiency. An electromagnetic motor with gears can be
driven at a velocity much higher than the input, meanwhile providing larger damping force. Donelan et al.
(2008) and Li et al. (2008) adopted geared electromagnetic motor in their energy harvesting system from
human walking, as shown in Figure 20. They designed
a knee-mounted device, resulting little effect on human
walking gait during the harvesting. The control system
provides the power generation engagement or disengagement commands, where the energy harvesting
function is activated only at the end of the swing phase
when knee flexor muscles act to brake knee motion,
based on the measured knee kinematics during a gait
cycle. It harvested 4.8 6 0.8 W in experimental tests.
Rather than magnifying the motion for electromagnetic transducers, force magnification has been used in
piezoelectric materialbased harvester. As shown in
Figure 21 (Antaki et al., 1995), the piezoelectric ceramic

Zuo and Tang

1417

Figure 20. Knee-mounted energy harvester, 4.8 W: (a) harvesters are worn on both legs and (b) mechanical design (Donelan et al.,
2008).

Figure 21. Regenerative shoes with hydraulic force amplifier,

0.85 W (Antaki et al., 1995).

wafers are stacked longitudinally in a cylinder (200 mm

length and 16 mm diameter), which is driven by the
hydraulic amplified force at the end of foot. Since the
force is amplified, the displacement is accordingly
reduced. In this system, 10 mm of displacement of
either the heel or the forefoot translated into 0.29 mm
displacement of the stack, and an average energy of
0.85 W was generated. Xu et al. (2011) proposed a
hybrid piezoelectric energy harvesterbased (Figure 22)
flexure force amplification mechanism that almost eliminated the inactive materials in the piezoelectric energy
harvester, thus achieving 26% mechanical-to-electric
energy conversion efficiency, five times higher than that
of the state-of-the-art piezoelectric transducers.

It also should be noted that these magnifications

may introduce extra power loss, mainly due to friction
in the force transmission for electromagnetic transducers (Li et al., 2011) and the elastic energy storage in
the force transmission for piezoelectric transducers. An
optimal magnification ratio should be determined to
maximize the energy efficiency.
In addition to the static motion magnification,
dynamic motion magnification that takes advantage of
vibration resonance has been proposed to effectively
enhance the energy harvesting. One way is to introduce
extra mass or vibration modes to the energy harvesting
systems (Aldraihem and Baz, 2011; Tang and Zuo,
2011a; Zhou et al., 2011). The working principle can be
considered as a dual of TMDs in vibration mitigation.
Another method is to introduce the nonlinearity into
the system. For example, Mann and Sims (2009)
designed a vibration energy harvester with magnetic
levitation, where the nonlinear phenomenon is used to
improve the effectiveness of the energy harvesting
device. The nonlinearity of the small-scale energy harvesting systems has been investigated by many researchers (Karami et al., 2012; Stanton et al., 2010), especially
for the piezoelectric materialbased energy harvester;
however, one of the large-scale energy harvester still
needs more studies.

Linear motion to rotation

When used in vibration energy harvesting, rotational
electromagnetic generators are usually more compact
than the linear motors. However, it requires mechanism

1418

Figure 22. Piezoelectric multilayer stacks and force

amplification mechanism (Xu et al., 2011).

to transfer the linear motion of vibration into rotational

motion. Several mechanisms have been proposed, and
some prototypes have been built to obtain harvesters
with rotational electromagnetic motors, including links,
screws, rack and pinions, and fluids.
One of the mechanism is motion links. Gupta et al.
(2006) proposed to use level mechanism in a regenerative shock absorber, which consists of a geared rotational motor and a level, resulting in six resolutions of
the motor to one of the level. This configuration can
not only change the relative linear motion into rotational motion, but also can magnify the motion resulting in a high efficiency. It was tested on a small allterrain vehicle (125 kg) and harvested up to a peak
power of 88.8 W when passing 4$3 4$ bars, which is
21% in efficiency.
Traditionally, ball screw mechanism is used to transform the rotational motion of the electromagnetic
motor into linear motion, resulting in linear actuator.
In energy harvesting from vibration, researchers use it
inversely. Kawamoto et al. (2008) proposed an electromechanical actuator consisting of rotational electromagnetic motor and ballscrew mechanism, as shown
in Figure 23(a). A prototype is also built. The ball
screw transfers the linear motion into rotational motion
and then drives the electromagnetic motor. Also using
ballscrew mechanism, Zhang et al. (2007) conducted a
full-vehicle experiment to test the vibration performance and feasibility for energy harvesting. Cassidy et
al. (2011) designed an electromagnetic transducer with
ballscrew mechanism for energy harvesting from

Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures 24(11)

large-scale civil structures, for which the power levels
can be above 100 W for excitation frequencies below 1
Hz, as shown in Figure 23(b). Applying of ballscrew
mechanism to the system will also introduce extra
dynamics, which needs to be fully investigated. For
example, Cassidy and Scruggs (2012) treat the
Coulomb friction force introduced by ballscrew as an
equivalent linear viscous term based on statistical linearization. A nonlinear modeling of the system is also
discussed by Cassidy (2011), based on experimental
data, where the hysteretic effect is modeled as a nonlinear spring over wide range of frequencies. Similar
ballscrew mechanisms based on ballscrew can be
found in passive vibration control of vehicle suspension
(Suda et al. (2000); Suda et al. (2003)).
Rack and pinion and relevant modified systems also
have potential in linear to rotational motion transformation. It is used in the study by Rome et al. (2005) to
transfer the vertical movement of the mass into the
rotation. In practical application, the gear backlash
between the rack and pinion is always not negligible,
posing uncertain factor to the dynamics. Zuo et al.
(2011; R&D100 Award) designed a regenerative vehicle
shock absorber with rackpinion mechanism, as shown
in Figure 24. Together with bevel gears, the mechanism
makes the regenerative shock absorber compact and is
retrofittable to the conventional vehicles. Tang and
Zuo (2011b) also used rackpinion mechanism to convert the oscillation of the building to the rotation of the
generator, as shown in Figure 25. Both energy harvesting and vibration control are achieved at the same time.
Choi et al. (2009) used the rack and pinion mechanism
to transfer the linear motion of the shock absorber of a
vehicle into rotation to drive the generator, as shown in
Figure 26. An integrated electrorheological (ER) shock
absorber, the typical energy consumption of which is
20 W, is controlled and driven only using the harvested
energy. The weight of a passing vehicle engages a
ratchet to drive the flywheel and generator. The unique
feature of this system is that the electromagnetic generators only rotate in one direction and can directly
obtain DC voltage without using rectifiers.

Figure 23. Vibration energy harvesters using ballscrew mechanism: (a) regenerative shock absorber (Kawamoto et al., 2008) and
(b) large structural vibration energy harvester (Cassidy et al., 2011).
PM: permanent magnet.

Zuo and Tang

1419

Figure 24. Regenerative shock absorber using rack-pinion mechanism (R&D100 Award, 2011).

Figure 25. Energy harvesting from buildings with TMD using

rackpinion mechanism (Tang and Zuo, 2011b).
TMD: tuned mass damper.

Penamalli (2011), Phillips (2011) and Wang et al.,

(2013) utilized rackpinion mechanism to harvest the
vibration energy from railway tracks. Their energy harvesting systems have unique mechanism, which is to
convert the bidirectional vibration into unidirectional
rotation of the generator; thus, efficiency and lifetime
of the harvester can be improved significantly. The
design and prototype with motion rectifier built by
Wang et al., (2013) is shown in Figure 27.
The ballscrew and rackpinion mechanisms mentioned earlier convert the bidirectional vibration into
the alternating rotation of the electromagnetic motor.
However, there are many problems. For example, due
to the inertia, the shock absorber investigated in the
study by Kawamoto et al. (2008) had bad vibration

Figure 26. Self-powered ER damper with rack and pinion

mechanism (Choi et al., 2009).
ER: electrorheological.

performance at high frequency when active vibration

control method was used. The alternating directions of
the motor and gears will wear out the gears easily. So,
Li, and Zuo et al. (Zuo, et al, 2011, Li et al, 2012) also
proposed to use a mechanical motion rectifier, as shown
in Figure 28, which can change the bidirectional vibration into smooth one-directional rotational motion of
the motor, resulting in high efficiency and more robustness. Besides, the electromagnetic motor will provide
DC voltage if DC motor is utilized.
In addition to the above-mentioned links, screws,
and rackpinions, fluid is another mechanism for

1420

Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures 24(11)

(a)

(b)

Figure 27. Railway energy harvester with motion rectifier and flying wheel (Wang et al., 2013): (a)3-D modeling of the design; (b)
full-size prototype.

motion transmission. Anderson et al. (Chandler, 2009)

designed a regenerative shock absorber by adopting
turbine inside the hydraulic shock absorber. The displacement and velocity are magnified and transmitted to
the turbine-driven electromagnetic motor when the
fluids flow through the turbine. Energy was claimed up
to 1 kW when tested on a heavy truck or up to 10%
improvement in fuel efficiency. However, the road condition for the experimental tests is not given, and the
dynamics and the vibration mitigation performance of
the truck were not considered. First, the mechanical
force exerted by the passing vehicle compresses the air
in a vessel. Then, the compressed air drives the generator continuously, and thus, energy is harvested indirectly from the traffic bumps. In ocean wave energy
harvesting, one popular power take off (PTO) mechanism is to use wave energy to drive pumps that pressurize a hydraulic or pneumatic fluid and then drive a
rotational generator via a hydro or air turbine.

Energy harvesting circuits and power

management
In energy harvesting system, the power electronic circuits have four main functions: (1) to regulate the AC
harvested power to DC with a voltage suitable for the
load or energy storage device; (2) to enhance the harvesting efficiency. In most situations, the vibration level
always varies, resulting in the low efficiency of circuit
with fixed parameters optimized for certain vibration
level. Power electronic circuits with controllable parameters are able to improve the energy efficiency by
adaptively changing certain parameters according to
the vibration level or external load (Ottman et al., 2002,
2003); (3) to control the vibration, which is a special
issue when semi-active or active control is adopted; and
(4) to manage the power flow.
Typically, the power electronic circuits in vibration
energy harvesting consist of rectifier, DCDC converter, and energy storage device or grid tie inverters, as

shown in Figure 29. We will focus on the AC/DC and

voltage regulation parts of the circuit, which are particularly associated with vibration energy harvesting.

ACDC converters
The electricity generated by the vibration energy harvesting system is usually AC, with varying frequency
and amplitude. It cannot power the electronic devices
or feed the power grid directly. Traditional rectifier,
which consists of four diodes, changes the AC generated by the transducer into DC. However, due to the
large parasitic power consumption and the forward voltage drop of the diodes (0.61.5 V for a normal silicon
diode and 0.20.4 V for a Schottky diode), the efficiency
is low. Several literatures have proposed alternative
schemes for rectifying the current with higher efficiency.
For example, Dallago et al. (2008) presented an active
voltage doubler ACDC converter for piezoelectric
energy harvesting systems. Their simulation result shows
an improvement as high as 94% in the efficiency.
Synchronous rectifier has high efficiency, especially
in low-voltage applications, since the forward voltage
drop is less than traditional diode bridge rectifiers
(Mohan et al., 1995). It is also used for the purpose of
improving the efficiency in vibration energy harvesting
(e.g. Han et al., 2004). The power loss in traditional
rectifier is proportional to the product of its forward
voltage drop V and its forward conduction current I.
The synchronous rectifier is composed of controlled
switches such as power metal oxide semiconductor field
effect transistors (MOSFETs) or power bipolar junction transistors (BJTs), and it appears as a resistor in
terms of the power loss. From the currentvoltage relations of these two rectifiers (Figure 30), we can conclude that under certain current level, the synchronous
rectifier has higher efficiency. However, it should be
noted that synchronous rectifier is an active device.
The utilization of this should be carefully considered.
On the other hand, the synchronous rectifier has great

Zuo and Tang

1421

Figure 28. Shock absorber with mechanical motion rectifier: (a). Overall view; (b). Inner structure. (Zuo, et al, 2011, Li et al, 2012).

Figure 29. Typical power electronic circuit in vibration energy harvesting.

AC: alternating current; DC: direct current.

1
Less loss using Synchronous Rectifier

Voltage V [V]

0.8
Less loss using Diode Rectifier

0.6
0.4
0.2
0

Synchronous Rectifier
Diode Rectifier
0

10

15

20
25
Current I [A]

30

35

40

Figure 30. Comparison of the voltage drop between

synchronous rectifier and diode rectifier (assume MOSFET has
0.03 O on resistance).
MOSFET: metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor.

advantages if active vibration control is also used,

where the power flow is bidirectional. The synchronous
rectifiers consisting of controllable bidirectional

switches enable bidirectional power flow, while the

diode rectifiers just allow power flow of unique direction. Figure 31 shows one regenerative H-bridge
motor/generator driver. Using fully active switches, this
circuit enables directional power flow, which means it
can act as synchronous rectifier when harvesting vibration energy and as an actuator driver when active
vibration/motion control strategy is used. Liu et al.
(2009) also used this fully controllable regenerative Hbridge topology to increase the energy harvesting efficiency of a piezoelectric device.

Voltage regulators
Piezoelectric materials generate high voltage with relative low current, and electromagnetic motors generate
low voltage, which will be lower than the voltage of the
energy storage. In addition, the voltage and current
vary with the vibration level. DCDC converters are

1422

Figure 31. Regenerative H-bridge motor/generator driver.

used either to boost or to reduce the voltage to the

range of the energy storage device. Step-up DCDC
converter (boost converter) (Cao et al., 2007; Cao and
Lee, 2006; Kazimierczuk and Massarini, 1997), stepdown DCDC converter (buck converter) (Ottman
et al., 2002, 2003), and flyback converter (Sodano et al.,
2004) have been widely used.
The topologies of the step-up DCDC converter
and step-down DCDC converter are shown in Figure
32. The capacitors C1 and C2 serve as buffers to
smooth the voltage. The switching frequency of the
DCDC converter is usually much higher than the one
of the vibration. Hence, the input and output can be
controlled in real time through the electronic switch
using pulse width modulation (PWM). The output of
the DCDC converters can be adjusted by the duty
cycle of PWM.
Controlled by the duty cycle of the switch, the stepup DCDC converter can work in either discontinuous
or continuous modes. The difference between these
two modes is that the current of the inductor L falls to
0 or not.
Traditionally, the DCDC converter is applied after
the rectifier. Considering that the parasitic power loss
due to the forward voltage drop of the rectifier diodes
is considerable, Dwari and Parsa (2010) proposed direct
AC to DC converters by adopting voltage boost before
the diode rectifier, as shown in Figure 33, which will

Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures 24(11)

reduce the current flow through the diode by increasing
the voltage, and hence improve the efficiency. Actually,
this type of circuit has been used by Kim and Okada
(2002), and the function was to eliminate the dead zone
due to the voltage drop of the diodes. Tang and Zuo
(2011b) investigate the force control capability of this
circuit in energy harvesting from tall buildings, where
the damping force provided by the energy harvesting is
controlled by the duty cycle of the switch S.
Cao and Lee (2006) and Cao et al. (2007) used boost
converters to step up the low voltage generated by an
electromagnetic microgenerator. Meanwhile, feedforward and feedback circuits (Figure 34) are adopted
to adjust the duty cycle to keep the output voltage stable, despite the input voltage (vibration level) and
external load change. Kim et al. (2007) used a buck
converter to transfer the electricity of high voltage generated by piezoelectric ceramics to lower output voltage
for the load. Similar applications can be found in
piezoelectric materialbased energy harvester, since
piezoelectric materials generate high voltage.
Ottman et al. (2002, 2003) pointed out that the
power electronic circuits have influence on the energy
harvesting efficiency. The energy harvesting efficiency
is relevant with the duty cycle of the buck converter
and derived the analytical optimal duty cycle for the
piezoelectric materialbased energy harvester with buck
converter. Similarly, Zuo and Tang (2009) analyzed the
optimal duty cycle of electromagnetic motorbased
energy harvester with booster converter, with taking
the voltage drop of the diodes and inherent resistance
and inductance of the motor into account.
Other voltage regulators include the double voltage
circuit proposed by Kim and Okada (2002), which simply doubles the output voltage, and four-state charge
pump proposed by Han et al. (2004) to boost the output voltage, where the capacitors are charged in parallel and discharged in series and controlled by a switch
array. Guyomar et al. (2005) investigated a nonlinear

Figure 32. DCDC converter: (a) step-up DCDC converter (booster converter) and (b) step-down DCDC converter (buck
converter).
DC: direct current.

Zuo and Tang

Figure 33. Direct ACDC converter with force control

capacity (Tang and Zuo, 2011b).
AC: alternating current; DC: direct current; PWM: pulse width
modulation.

technology to increase the harvested power from a

piezoelectric vibration energy harvester. This technique,
called synchronized switch harvesting on inductor
(SSHI), can increase the power by several times over
the standard technique. Although many circuits mentioned earlier are for small-scale vibration energy harvesting, the idea can also be extended to large-scale
energy harvesting.

Force Control
The energy harvesting interface circuits not only have
influence on the energy efficiency, but also have effect
on the dynamics of the mechanical system, since the
mechanical system and circuit are coupled. This topic
has been investigated in passive and semi-active vibration mitigation using piezoelectric materials or

1423
electromagnetic motors, where the actuation force is
controlled by regulating the voltage on the piezoelectric
transducers or the current through the mechanical system by circuits in a passive way the electromagnetic
transducers. The potential of controlling the vibration
via controlling the harvesting circuit, for example, by
adjusting the duty cycle of the DCDC converter or
the synchronous rectifier, has been investigated
(Scruggs, 2007; Tang and Zuo, 2011b). More potential
exists to extend the energy harvesting as a semiactive
control system.

Bidirectional power flow control

The priority in most large scale vibration harvesting is
the protection of its mechanical systems and the human
occupants or passengers during the vibration. Hence,
regenerative active control and self-powered active control are desired in many large-scale energy harvesting
applications, where the power flow should be bidirectional. In recent years, the development of high power
bidirectional DC-DC converters has become a hot topic
due to the demands from fuel cells, hybrid vehicles, and
battery based energy storage systems (Peng et al., 2004;
Li et al., 2013). Various bidirectional DC-DC converters have been proposed as the interface between energy
source and energy storage devices with focus on automotive or fuel cell applications (Inoue and Akagi, 2007;
Maclaurin et al., 2011; Peng et al., 2004; Schupbach
and Balda, 2003). No much work has been done so far
in term of bidirectional power electronics for vibration
harvesting applications. The electronics topologies for

Figure 34. Feed-forward and feedback control of DCDC PWM boost converter (Cao et al., 2007; Cao and Lee, 2006).
DC: direct current; PWM: pulse width modulation.

1424

Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures 24(11)

(a)

(b)

(c)

Figure 35. Isolated bidirectional DC-DC converters (Li et al., 2013) (a) half-bridge structure, (b) neutral point clamped three-level,
and (c) Split-Pi bidirectional converter topology.

bidirectional power flow can be borrowed from the

hybrid vehicles, fuel cells, or battery energy storage.
One simple way to achieve bidirectional power transfer is to use two independent unidirectional converters.
However, bidirectional converters are more compact
with lower component count, and tend to be more efficient. According to whether the circuit uses transformer
to realize isolation between the two power sources, the
bidirectional DC-DC converters can be categorized into
two types, isolated and non-isolated.
Non-isolated bidirectional DC-DC converters generally have advantages of simple structure, high efficiency, low cost, and high reliability. The non-isolated
bidirectional DC-DC converters that are derived from
basic unidirectional topologies such as half-bridge converter, Cuk converter, and SEPIC converter have been
summarized in literature (Du et al., 2010, Li et al.,
2013). A basic half-bridge bidirectional topology based
on traditional unidirectional buck converter is shown
in Figure 35-a. In this circuit, the converter operates as
a buck converter when power is flowing from the high
voltage side (left hand side) to the low voltage side
(right hand side), and as a boost converter when operating in the reverse direction. In large power applications, switch voltage stress and switch loss become a
concern in circuit topology designs. Three-level (TL)
bidirectional DC-DC converters have been investigated
for fuel-cell/battery hybrid power systems (Figure 35-b,
Du et al. (2010). The Split-Pi topology (Figure 35-c,
Maclaurin et al., 2011) is a boost converter followed by
a buck converter. It is symmetric and which means it
can work as either a boost or a buck converter in both
directions by applying appropriate control on the
switches.
Isolated DC-DC converters utilize a transformer to
provide galvanic isolation to protect sensitive circuits
from noise or high voltage and achieve high voltage
conversion ratio. In order to feed the transformer, the
DC current must be converted into AC current before
the transformer and then rectified to DC current again
after the transformer, as shown in Figure 36.
Basic topologies can be used to construct isolated
bidirectional converters by adding a transformer in

between. Non-isolated bidirectional converter is good

on price. However, isolated full-bridge topologies can
achieve much better conversion ratio (over 100) than
non-isolated topologies with inductor. To minimize the
transformer size, weight and cost, the frequency of the
AC current should be as high as possible
(Jalbrzykowski and Citko, 2008). However, the frequency increase is limited by the transistor conduction
and switching losses. Due to the energy loss in the
transformers, isolated bidirectional DC-DC converters
may be applied in large scale energy harvesting systems,
such as tall buildings and ocean wave energy harvesting
systems.

Vibration control algorithms

Quite different from small-scale vibration energy harvesting, in the large-scale vibration energy harvesting,
the vibration performances of the primary structures
are always concerned. Often, the researchers try to
make dual use of the existing vibration control mechanism for energy harvesting. Hence, the vibration energy
should be extracted while providing better vibration
mitigation of the primary structure or at least maintaining the vibration suppression of the primary structure.
The circuits with potential to control the damping force
of the systems have been reviewed in section Vibration
control. On the other hand, researches have looked
into different control algorithms to control the relevant
circuits in order to control the vibration. There are two
typical implementations of the control algorithms. One
is first designing the full active control algorithm and
then put the constraints of the circuit to the feedback
force, shown in Figure 37(a) as an example. The other
one is to include the constraints due to the energy harvesting circuit when designing the controller. This controller using this method may be formed as a bilinear
matrix inequality (BMI) or linear matrix inequality
(LMI) problems (Scruggs, 2007, 2010). Besides, many
performance objectives can be considered in the same
framework (Scruggs et al., 2012). Giorgetti et al. (2006)
proposed another method for the semi-active suspension control, where the quarter-car model and the

Zuo and Tang

1425

Figure 36. Schematic of isolated bidirectional converter.

Figure 37. Implementations of vibration control in vibration energy harvesting system: (a) using clipped control (Tang and Zuo,
2010) and (b) multiobjective energy harvesting problem (Scruggs et al., 2012).

constraints of the semi-active control is modeled into a

hybrid dynamical systems and Modeling Predictive
Control (MPC) is used for the controlled design. It is
found that the explicit MPC control law is the same as
the clipped LQG control when the predictive horizon is
equal to one and MPC control can provide better performance than the clipped LQG control if it has more
predictive horizon. Similar observation was also found
by Huang et al. (2011).
On the other hand, instead of harvesting and storing
the energy, the harvested electricity is further used to
implement active vibration control, resulting selfpowered active control (Nakano et al., 2003; Nakano
and Suda, 2004). Although little energy for external
usage is obtained, the vibration of the primary structure is suppressed significantly. For example, Scruggs
and Lindner (1999) investigated on the feasibility of
self-powered active control on harvesting energy from
buildings using simple velocity and displacement algorithm. Tang and Zuo (2010) confirmed the feasibility
with linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) control. The
regular rectifier can be used in semiactive control. In

active vibration control with energy harvesting, where

the power flow is bidirectional, switch-based control is
usually used (Nakano and Suda, 2004). For example,
Nakano et al. (2003) analyzed the possibility of
self-powered active vibration control using linear electromagnetic motor and concluded that active vibration
control without consuming external energy can be
achieved under suitable conditions derived from energy
balance analysis. Their experiment test verified that the
vibration mitigation performance of the self-powered
active control is significantly improved over the passive
vibration mitigation approaches. Instead of storing the
electricity in capacitors, Jolly and Margolis (1997)
stored the energy temporarily in inductor and by alternatively storing and releasing the energy controlled by
switches, realizing a self-powered active control system.
Similarly, Zheng et al. (2008) analyzed the performance
and energy by dividing the whole system into two operation modes controlled by switches, namely, electric
motor mode and regenerative braking mode. In electric
motor mode, the optimal ride comfort is obtained by
active control; in regenerative braking mode, the

1426
system can harvest energy from the vibration and
improve the ride comfort performance meanwhile.

Challenges and future directions

Small-scale energy harvesting has been investigated by
researchers for more than a decade, resulting in a
wealth of articles and interesting applications in wireless sensors and electronic devices. Large-scale energy
harvesting at 1W -100 kW or more promises a more
meaningful solution to the energy crisis and a selfpower active or semiactive vibration control. However,
more challenges exist in large-scale vibration energy
harvesting, and many questions remain to be answered.
In this paper, we first review the power potential from
large-scale vibration energy harvesting from vehicle suspensions, civil structures, rail way tracks, ocean waves,
and human motions. We survey the piezoelectric, linear electromagnetic and rotational electromagnetic
transducers, and different motion and transmission
mechanisms. Power electronic circuits and control strategies are also reviewed.
Efficiency is always a concern in vibration energy
harvesting, which requires more efficient transducer,
motion mechanisms, and novel power electronic circuits. The efficiency of piezoelectric materialbased
energy harvester has been widely investigated using new
materials and developing novel physical or geometrical
configurations. However, the optimization of electromagnetic motor receives little attention. Significant efficiency improvement can be achieved if the back
electromotive force coefficient ke can be increased.
Motion mechanism is also very important to improve
the efficiency. Partial power is lost when the kinetic
energy is transformed into electric energy, such as eddy
current or friction. Another important power loss is
parasitic voltage drops or the inherent resistances of the
electronic components or the power consumption by
the controller. Techniques to reduce this voltage drop
and the parasitic power consumption need to be further
investigated. A fundamental challenge is that large-scale
vibration is very irregular at time-varying frequency
and at low, alternating velocities, which makes efficient
and reliable energy conversion difficult and limits the
options for efficient power takeoff technology. The
novel mechanical motion rectifier that converts irregular oscillatory vibration into regular unidirectional rotation is worth of attention.
Vibration control is another particular challenge
associated with large-scale energy harvesting. Quite different from the small-scale energy harvesting where the
vibration of the host structure is not a concern, the priority in most large-scale vibration harvesting is the protection of the mechanical systems and the human
occupants or passengers during the vibration. This
makes many techniques in small-scale energy harvesting

Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures 24(11)

impractical here. For example, mechanic resonance can
be used to magnify the vibration and hence improve the
output power of the harvester in small-scale application. However, it becomes difficult in regenerative vehicle suspensions. Hence, the ability of simultaneous
vibration control and energy harvesting should be considered in every component of large-scale vibration harvesting, and advanced control algorithms are required.
For example, the motion mechanism should be efficient
in driving and driven modes, the power electronics should
be able to take energy from the mechanical systems and
also to pump energy into it also, and the control algorithms should regulate the electrical output voltage and
control the regenerated electrical current or voltage at the
same time. Since the large-scale energy harvesting is not
just a design problem, multiple disciplinary and systemlevel approaches should be taken, which involves structure dynamics and vibration, mechanical design, power
electronics, materials, and control.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the assistance from many graduates and undergraduates in the Energy Harvesting and
Mechatronics Research Lab at Stony Brook University.

Funding
This study was funded by the National Science Foundation
(NSF grant CMMI1031038), New York State Energy
Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA contracts
15761 and 25537), Department of Transportation (RITA/
UTRC grant), University Transportation Research Center,
Region II (Faculty Development Minigrant), SUNY Research
Foundation (Technology Accelerator Fund), and industry.

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