Journal of Cleaner Production 366 (2022) 132897

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Journal of Cleaner Production

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro

A vibration-powered self-contained node by profiling mechanism and its

application in cleaner agricultural production
Peigen Wang a, b, Mingyuan Gao a, b, Yuhua Sun a, b, Huanyu Zhang a, b, Yun Liao a, b,
Shouyong Xie a, b, *
a
College of Engineering and Technology, Southwest University, Chongqing, 400715, China
b
Chongqing Key Laboratory of Agricultural Equipment in Hilly Area, Chongqing, 400715, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Handling Editor: Zhen Leng The vibration-based electromagnetic energy harvester offers a cost-effective and promising renewable energy
approach. With the rapid development of autonomous agricultural production, advanced agricultural machinery
Keywords: equipped with multiple sensors is of significant importance. In the hilly areas of southwest China, the driver of
Electromagnetic energy harvester the pennisetum sinese roxb harvester must frequently adjust the height of the stripping header to adapt to the
Profiling mechanism
terrain height variation and it leads to high labor intensity. Because of the harness environment of the working
Sweep vibration experiment
condition, the arrangement of wires for sensors is almost impossible. Thus, a self-powered sensor node by
Random broadband vibration
Agricultural machinery profiling mechanism with a vibration energy harvester is proposed. This paper presents theoretical and exper­
imental research on a profiling mechanism using a vibration energy harvester, with which a detailed theoretical
model is established to perform the dynamic simulation study. Diverse excitation conditions such as sinusoidal
sweeping vibration tests, fixed frequency vibration and stochastic road spectrum tests of agricultural machinery
were implemented to verify the power generation capacity. The simulation results agree well with the experi­
mental data. Experimental results show the peak-peak voltage and power of the proposed device reach about 44
V and 113 mW under low frequency and large displacement excitations. The vibration test justifies the feasibility
of the proposed profiling mechanism in the application scene for powering the range sensor applied in agri­
cultural production.

1. Introduction
1.1. Research motivation
Agriculture, as the primary industry of the whole country, directly
influences the development of the nation’s economy(Liu et al., 2018).
The agricultural machinery, which would greatly improve the general
production capacity in agriculture, is being developed towards
modernization and intelligence (Reina et al., 2016). In recent years, with
the rapid development of sensors and control technology, more and
more intelligent agricultural machinery emerges. Quantities of sensors
and controllers, which are requisite electronic components, consume
battery power(Jose et al., 2016). However, environment-unfriendly
batteries have finite life cycles and need regular maintenance(Fang
et al., 2017). Due to the harsh working environment, it is infeasible to
implement cable arrangements for some sensors in the agricultural
machinery. Thus, harvesting the vibration energy of the machinery itself
to power the sensor would be a good choice to replace the external cable
(Kuang et al., 2021). The vibration-based energy harvesters, which
capture the mechanical vibration energy and convert it into electric
energy, have already been widely used in almost all fields, like the
railway track system(Gao et al., 2019, 2020a), the wireless sensor net­
works (Gao et al., 2020b), and et al. (Lu et al., 2021a). Severe vibration
characterized by large displacement, low frequency, and small acceler­
ation, generated by the agricultural machinery, is an ideal vibration
exciting source for the energy harvester (Lu et al., 2021b). Harvesting
the vibration energy of the agricultural machinery to power the sensors
could eliminate environmentally unfriendly batteries and help to
conserve energy (Lu et al., 2020). It is an inexorable trend for the sus­
tainable development of society in the long term(Sunusi Zhou et al.,
2020a).
For the rural area in the southwest of China, the hilly and moun­
tainous areas occupy above 90% of the whole farmland(Li et al., 2022).
The self-walking intelligent agricultural machines are small and

* corresponding author. College of Engineering and Technology, Southwest University, Chongqing, 400715, China.
E-mail address: xsyswu@163.com (S. Xie).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.132897
Received 3 January 2022; Received in revised form 24 April 2022; Accepted 25 June 2022
Available online 28 June 2022
0959-6526/© 2022 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
P. Wang et al.
medium-sized. Because of the increasing labor shortage in the coun­
tryside, the development of intelligent agricultural machinery becomes
an inevitable trend(Sunusi Zhou et al., 2020b). Fig. 1 is the motivation
for this research. Plenty of Pennisetum sinese roxb (as shown in Fig. 1
(a)) is planted in the hilly and mountainous areas of southwest China.
When the farmer harvests the pasture on the rugged farmland shown in
Fig. 1(b), the stripping header(as illustrated in Fig. 1(c)) must be
frequently adjusted to adapt to the terrain height variation and keep the
cutting height the same. This operation increases the labor intensity of
the farmer. Meanwhile, the accidents such as the stripping header
hitting the ground and the cutter damage occur from time to time.
Therefore, a terrain profiling mechanism with an energy harvester(as
shown in Fig. 1(d)) was proposed to detect the terrain height variation in
real-time and automatically adjusted the height of the stripping header.
The Pennisetum sinese roxb can reach 5–6 m tall and its stalk diameter is
in the range of 2–4 cm in the mature period. Furthermore, the flourished
grown pasture and its stiff stem seriously disturbed the sightline of the
farmer and arranges wires for the range sensor impossible. The best way
is to utilize the vibration energy to power the range sensor. The internal
structure is shown in Fig. 1(e). The compressed spring, which connected
the moving part and the unmoving part of the protective box, makes the
wheel contact with the ground firmly. The axle moves freely in the axle
sleeve in the vertical direction. The range sensor, which detects the axle
displacement, is installed on the top of the axle sleeve. Once we know
the relative displacement between the axle and the axle sleeve, the
descent or ascend the height of the stripping header can be determined.
The energy harvester consists of two parts, the fixed Nylon tube, and
the moving Nylon pillar. The coil and the magnet are fixed on the Nylon
tube and the Nylon pillar, respectively. Under the broad spectrum
excitation, the relative displacement between the coil and the magnet
occurs Thus, the induced voltage generates. The DC output for the range
sensor is obtained by the rectifier and energy storage circuit. Therefore,
we attempt to verify the functionality of the proposed terrain profiling
mechanism with an energy harvester to power the range sensor of the
agricultural machinery and pioneer a new application field for vibration
energy harvesting.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: The literature review
Fig. 1. The motivation of this research (a) the Pennisetum sinese roxb; (b) the Pennisetum sinese roxb harvester; (c) the stripping header; (d) the terrain profiling
mechanism; (e) the internal structure of the profiling mechanism.
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Journal of Cleaner Production 366 (2022) 132897
was implemented in the first part. The fabrication of the profiling
mechanism with the energy harvester and the theoretical model was
illustrated in section 2. The Laboratory tests were conducted and the
feasibility of the proposed device in the application scenario for pow­
ering the range sensor applied in the intelligent agricultural machinery
was justified by the stochastic road spectrum vibration test in part 3.
Finally, the conclusions were made in Section 4.
1.2. Literature review
Especially of its relative reliability and wide availability, vibration-
based energy is the most popular one within the energy harvesting
research community (Beeby et al., 2006). Piezoelectric vibration energy
generators (Gao et al., 2016), electromagnetic (Hou et al., 2019; Sun
et al., 2021), and electrostatic (Meninger et al., 2001) energy conversion
devices have already been deeply investigated. However, the energy
harvester of electromagnetic induction mechanism is the most
cost-effective one (Cepnik et al., 2013). According to Faraday’s law of
induction, the magnetic flux change in a circuit will lead to the induction
of the electromotive force (Ma et al., 2012). Based on the principle, the
researchers designed different types of electromagnetic energy
harvester, and the performance was analyzed by the corresponding
mathematical model combined with the experimental investigation.
From the perspective of mechanical structure design, perfor­
mance amelioration of the electromagnetic vibration energy harvester
has become a research focus recently (Nammari and Bardaweel, 2017).
Aldawood et al. (2019) proposed a dual-mass and a geometrically
nonlinear mechanical planar spring as a route to significantly improve
the power metrics of traditional magnetic energy harvesters. Saravia
et al. (2017) developed a device with multi-coil, multi-magnet, and
multi-spacer designs. Fang et al., 2020a, 2020b presented a mathemat­
ical model to analyze a rotational impact energy harvester by using the
centrifugal softening effect. Podder et al. (2017) adjusted the separation
gap between the opposite magnets by adding a tuning screw mechanism
and the nonlinear frequency response of the harvester was tuned to
capture the desired frequency. Nammari et al. (2018a) employed four
rubber springs to guide the movement of the floating magnets that could
P. Wang et al.
reduce friction between floating magnets and the inner wall of the
harvester and allow the floating magnets to be aligned in the energy
harvester based on the magnetic spring. Kecik et al. (2017) presented a
new model including the inductive coefficient which relates mechanical
and electrical components. Zhang et al. (2019) designed a new device,
which was composed of a levitation magnetoelectric energy harvester
and a nonlinear vibration absorber, for whole-spacecraft systems. The
device could effectively reduce the vibration, furthermore, it had a more
substantial energy harvesting capability than the available systems. Zhu
et al. (Zhu and Zu, 2012) proposed the design and analysis of a new
magnetoelectric device that adopted the special laminate to harvest
energy from nonlinear vibrations.
From the perspective of energy performance enhancement,
some scientific researchers concentrated on how to reduce or eliminate
the effects of electrical damping. The research result of Dai et al. (2015)
showed that the electrical load resistance has a great influence on the
coupling damping, thus affecting the starting speed of the galloping
vibration of the harvester. Chandelier et al. (2001). developed a velocity
amplification, which could increase velocity through impacts, to
improve the power generation capacity. Mann and Sims (2010)
emphasized that the inductance can change resonance, and the expres­
sion of the resonance frequency is derived. It is proved that the
maximum power transmitted to the power load can be changed by
inductance. A spring connected to a magnet to reduce the effect of
electrical damping on the vibration of the magnet is proposed and
applied by Tan (Tan et al., 2017) and Yoo (Yoo et al., 2020) et al. pro­
posed and made a device with a pendulum as moving parts and elec­
tromagnetic induction as energy conversion mechanism. The device had
an optimal damping level at which the power output is maximum. Pukar
et al. (Maharjan et al., 2021) designed a high-performance electro­
magnetic-triboelectric hybrid nanogenerator for harvesting biome­
chanical energy from keyboard typing motion.
From the perspective of practical performance, the other re­
searchers focused on the research and improvement of the power gen­
eration capacity of the energy harvester under low frequency and large
displacement. Kai W et al. (Kai et al., et al.) proposed that most types of
environmental vibration are in the low-frequency region, so the
quasi-zero-stiffness triboelectric nanogenerator was designed by
combining the quasi-zero-stiffness mechanism with the triboelectric
nanogenerator.Some researchers had improved the power generation
capacity of energy harvesters under low frequency large displacement
by introducing the bi-stability and multi-stability (Nguyen et al., 2019).
Su D et al. (Su et al., 2015) analyzed a device using ball screws to convert
low-speed linear motion into high-speed rotation under low frequency
and strong excitation, so as to improve power generation capacity.Gui P
et al. (Gui et al., 2018) developed a multipole linear permanent magnet
generator by analyzing the movement of human lower limbs during
walking. Jan S et al. (Jan et al., 2019) presented a novel nonlinear ki­
netic energy harvester design for extremely low excitation frequencies
below 10 Hz. Shen Y et al. (Shen, Lu) has proposed a new type of
non-resonant and free/impact motion steel frame electromagnetic en­
ergy collector for low frequency and large amplitude vibration energy
recovery.
Although the electromagnetic energy harvester proposed in the
above-mentioned documents has a sophisticated structure and greatly
improved performance, it is not practical in the field of smart agriculture
applications. Low frequency and large displacement excitation, which is
very beneficial to energy harvesting, are the typical characteristics of
agricultural machinery. Therefore, this paper proposes a profiling
mechanism using a vibration energy harvester, which will harvest the
vibration energy of low frequency and large displacement excited by the
broad spectrum of agricultural machinery. The mechanism of the mag­
nets moving exactly with the excitation displacement and acceleration,
which could eliminate the undesired influence on the motion stability of
the levitated magnet caused by the sliding friction between the levitated
magnet and cylinder housing or the cylindrical outer surface of the
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Journal of Cleaner Production 366 (2022) 132897
current design, can harvest the vibration energy to the maximum and
high power output.
The previous discussion demonstrates the unique characteristics of
the electromagnetic induction energy harvesters, such as nonlinearity,
tunable resonance, etc. The mathematical models for different structures
have already been established, and the simulation analysis has been
implemented accordingly. Also, electromagnetic energy harvesters have
already been extensively investigated for the efficiency of power output.
Furthermore, most of the simulation analysis has already been verified
by the experiments, such as restoring force measurement, the sinusoidal
sweeping test. However, for the application in agricultural machinery,
high reliability and durability are the key factors. Therefore, we attempt
to harvester the vibration energy for the self-powred sensor node from
the agricultural machinery, which is working in the harness environ­
ment that makes the arrangement of wires for the range sensor impos­
sible. The innovations and originalities of the study are: (1) an
energy harvester, which can continuously supply power to the distance
sensor equipped on the profiling mechanism of agricultural machinery
in the wiring harness environment by collecting the vibration energy in
the environment, is proposed; (2) The smart design of the self-powered
sensor node of the profiling mechanism using vibration energy harvester
makes the intelligentization of agricultural machinery in hilly area
possible; (3) the laboratory tests combing with the simulation are
implemented to determine the power generation capacity of the pro­
posed energy harvester; (4) the proposed device in the application sce­
nario for self-powering sensor node in agricultural machinery is
validated by the stochastic road spectrum vibration tests.
2. Fabrication of the device and the theory model
Aiming at solving the power supply of the range sensor, which is
equiped in the agricultural machinery in the harsh environment, a
profiling mechanism with an energy harvester, which utilizes the vi­
bration energy characterised by low frequency and large displacement
excited by the stochastic road spectrum, is proposed to supply the power
for range sensor in the inaccessible situation for wire arrangement. The
fabrication of the proposed mechanism and the theoretical model are
elaborated in detail in the following part.
2.1. Research and design of energy harvester
To meet the self-powered requirements of sensors on intelligent
agricultural machinery, it is of necessity to design a suitable and stable
energy harvester. There are four possible energy collection methods, as
shown in Fig. 2. For solar energy, it is necessary to lay a large area of
solar panels to generate electricity, and it may be unable to meet the self-
powered requirements of the sensor due to the influence of the weather.
For friction electrification, there is no way to install the friction mate­
rials on the current structure. For the piezoelectric technology, although
the output voltage is relatively high, its internal resistance is at the
megohm level. Thus, the output power is not enough to supply the
sensor. Because of the special working condition of the agricultural
machinery, severe vibration, which is beneficial to vibration energy
harvesting, emerges once the machine runs. Therefore, the electro­
magnetically induced energy harvesting approach becomes the most
suitable method in this application field. Thus, an energy harvesting
device, as shown in Fig. 2 (f), is proposed in this paper by taking the
convenience of installation and durability into account. To verify the
power generation capacity, the actual road spectrum random vibration
test is implemented to validate its feasibility.
2.2. Fabrication of the profiling mechanism with an energy harvester
Fig. 3(a) shows the detailed internal structure of the proposed
profiling mechanism with an energy harvester. The mechanism is
mainly composed of two parts, the unmoveable part, which is coloured
P. Wang et al. Journal of Cleaner Production 366 (2022) 132897

Fig. 2. Research idea of the energy harvester: a) intelligent agricultural machinery, b) electromagnetic induction, c) piezoelectric effect, d) triboelectric effect, e)
solar effect, f) electromagnetic energy harvester.

Fig. 3. Fabrication of the profiling mechanism with an energy harvester: (a) the internal structure, (b) the energy harvester, (c) the distance measure­
ment mechanism.

in grey, is fixed to the stripping header, the lower part coloured in dark
grey is moving up and down exactly with the undulate road under the
force of the compression spring by the wheel. The hexagon steel sleeve
and the axle (as shown in Fig. 3(c)) are rigidly connected to the
unmoveable and moveable parts, respectively and they acted as an an­
chor. The ranging sensor, which detects the displacement of the axle, is
mounted on the top of the sleeve. The installation can effectively avoid
external disturbances such as the stems. Once the relative displacement
of the sleeve and the axle is known, the adjusted height of the stripper
header can be determined. As mentioned before, when the pennisetum
sinese roxb harvester is working in a harsh environment, the strong
stems often break the wires that supply power for the ranging sensor.
Therefore, the energy harvester, which uses the excitation of undulate
the road to generate electric energy to power the sensor, would be a
good choice. The connection mode is the same as the axle and the sleeve.
The only difference is that the coil is mounted on the Nylon tube and the
magnet is fixed on the top of the Nylon pillar as shown in Fig. 3(b).
The energy harvester will generate electric energy as long as relative
displacement exists.Table 1 lists the major characteristic parameters of
the proposed energy harvester.

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P. Wang et al. Journal of Cleaner Production 366 (2022) 132897

Table 1 of each turn of the mean layer differs from the magnet dipole center, the
The major characteristic parameters. total magnetic flux through the whole coil will be the sum of the number
The turns of the coil (N) 24000 The diameters of the coil wire- 0.16 of layers dφB /dy multiplied by the magnetic flux of change through each
(mm) turn as expressed by:
The height of the coil– (mm) 45 The radius of the magnet– (mm) 10 dφB μ M ∑n=Nt /2 3y2n 3
The height of the magnet– 30 The radius of the magnet– (mm) 10 = Nl 0 yn [ − ] (3)
(mm)
dy 2 n=− Nt /2
(r + y2n )5/2 (r2 + y2n )3/2
2

The remanence - B (T) 1.47 The height of the Nylon pillar–
(mm)
2.3. The mathematical model of the energy harvester
Fig. 3 shows relative movement between the coil and the magnet. For
the closed-loop electrical system, it is expressed by a circuit with the
load resistance and the coil internal resistance. A relative translational
movement between the magnet and the coil, which is excited by the road
spectrum, causes the coil flux change. Thus, the induced voltage will be
generated in the coil and it can be obtained by Faraday’s law of
induction:
dφB
εv = −
dt
where εv is the generated voltage and φB is the total magnetic flux in the
coil.
In the simplified condition of a magnet moving perpendicular to the
coil, the maximum induced open circuit voltage is described by(Manna
and Sims, 2009)
dx
Voc = NBl
dt
where N represents the total number of turns of the coil, B is the total
magnetic flux density, l is the total length of conducting wire, and x is
the relative displacement of the magnet in relation to the coil. The
voltage amplitude is determined and proportional to the velocity of the
moving magnet relative to the coil.
From Fig. 3 we know, φB is the total magnetic flux passing through
the coil. When the magnet oscillates in the cylinder housing, the distance
120
l
yn = y + n( ) (4)
Nt − 1
where l, Nl, Nt, N, r, M, μ0 are coil length, number of coil layers, number
of turns of each coil layer, the total number of turns, the coil mean
radius, the magnet moment and the permeability of the free space,
respectively.
According to the calculation method of the induced voltage, the
simulation model, which mainly contains a fixed coil and a moving
magnet, is established in the Comsol Multiphysics software. The induced
voltage is obtained from the simulation model.
3. Laboratory tests
(1)
The experiments were implemented in the following sections to
testify the correctness of the electromechanically coupled energy
harvester model. The experiment flow chart and test procedure, which is
used for the road spectrum stochastic vibration test, is described in
Fig. 4. The test procedure consists of two parts: the road spectrum
acquisition and the laboratory test. The road spectrum acquisition pro­
cess is as follows: the tri-axis accelerometers are glued firmly to different
(2) agricultural machinery parts. The other end of each accelerometer with
a connector is plugged into the LMS SCADAS data acquisition system
connected to the laptop with the USB cable adapter. When the agricul­
tural machinery is working in the farmland, the road spectrum is
recorded by the matching software in the laptop. The road spectrum is
exported as an exciting source in the laboratory test.
For the laboratory test, the acquired road spectrum is imported to the
control software of the electromagnetic shaker. The software controls
the controller to drive the power amplifier. According to the measured

Fig. 4. Experiment flow chart and test procedure used for the spectrum stochastic vibration test.

5
P. Wang et al.
road spectrum acceleration, the power amplifier is the power source to
make the shaker move in the vertical direction. The vibration table
moves precisely the same because it is fixed to the shaker rigidly.
Meanwhile, the energy harvester mounted on the vibration table gen­
erates the induced voltage, recorded by the oscilloscope simultaneously.
The function of accelerometers mounted on the vibration table is to
monitor the acceleration, and the real-time correction is implemented to
realize the precise control of the road spectrum acceleration in a close
loop.
3.1. The sinusoidal sweeping test
In this part, the sinusoidal frequency sweep test is used to verify
whether the proposed device has a good power generation capacity
under the condition of small frequency and large displacement excita­
tion. The sinusoidal sweeping frequency was from 5 to 20Hz and the
sweeping rate voct was 0.1oct/min. The time of sweeping frequency can
be calculated according to the following formulas, which is expressed as:
lg ffHL
n= (5)
lg2
n 3.3. Road spectrum random vibration test
t= (6)
voct
where the upper limit frequency is fH, the lower limit frequency is fL,n is
the octave, voct is the sweeping rate, t is the total sweeping time. Formula
(7) is the relationship of the parameters of the acceleration a, the fre­
quency f and the excitation peak to peak amplitude x.
x
a = (2πf )2 (7)
2
where a is the acceleration, f is the frequency, x is the peak-to-peak
excitation amplitude.
To explain the experimental results theoretically, the frequency,
acceleration and peak displacement of the test were set to be the same as
the actual situation, from 5Hz to 20Hz. Fig. 5(a) and Fig. 5(b) are the
curves of the acceleration frequency-domain and the displacement time-
domain, respectively. It is the excitation source that controls the motion
of the shaker and it is composed of two parts, the constant amplitude(as
shown in Fig. 5(b) the first former part) and the constant acceleration(as
shown in Fig. 5(a) the latter part). 6.16Hz is the cross-frequency that
separates the two sections. From 5 to 6.16Hz, the acceleration increases
with the frequency increases because the excitation amplitude is con­
stant. Formula (7) is the calculation method. From 6.16 to 20Hz, the
excitation acceleration is constant and the excitation amplitude de­
creases with the frequency increases. The calculation method is the
same. The peak-peak excitation displacement amplitude is 40 mm as
shown in Fig. 5(b). The constant excitation acceleration is 3g.
Usually, the excitation acceleration is imported into the control
software(as shown in Fig. 5(c)) of the shaker as the excitation source and
makes the mesa move exactly as the excitation source. The other end of
the energy harvester is rigidly fixed to the mounting bracket in Fig. 5(d).
When the shaker runs, the excitation source is input to the energy
harvester. The induced voltage generates (in Fig. 5(e)) because of the
principles of electromagnetic induction. Due to the high-frequency
electromagnetic radiation of the shaker, the measured voltage con­
tains the high-frequency interference. Generally, bandpass filters are
used to eliminate interference. According to the oscilloscope sampling
data, write a band-pass filter program to get the actual voltage. Fig. 5(f)
is the contrast of the collected signal and the filtered signal. From the
figure, the strong high-frequency interference is eliminated. To validate
the soundness of the simulation results, the simulated data and the
experimental results are plotted in Fig. 5(g). From the figure, we can see
that the simulation results are in accordance with the tested data.
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Journal of Cleaner Production 366 (2022) 132897
3.2. The fixed frequency test
In order to testify the power generation capacity of the energy
harvester in different loads, fixed frequency tests are implemented.
According to the structure of the energy harvester, high excitation fre­
quency and large displacement excitation contribute to high power
output. There are two scenarios to verify it. One is 5Hz and 40 mm peak
to peak excitation amplitude test and the other is 5Hz and 20 mm peak to
peak excitation amplitude test. Fig. 6(a) and Fig. 6(b) are the experi­
mental results, respectively. From the figures, we can see that the
generated voltage decreases almost 50% when the excitation is reduced
by half. Fig. 6(c) shows the generated voltages with diverse load re­
sistances, from 1000 to 10000Ω. With the load resistances increasing,
the output voltage also increases. The output voltages are 8.5V,
11.782V, 18.44V, 18.95V, 20.11V, 20.83V, 21.15V, 21.35V, 22.17V and
23.92V, respectively. Fig. 6(d) is the output power under different load
resistances. The maximum power is 113.34mw when the load resistance
is 3000Ω because of the coil resistance is about 3000Ω under 3g accel­
eration and 40 mm peak to peak displacement amplitude excitation. The
minimum power is 54.61 mW.
For the practical application, it is a very crucial part to verify
whether the energy harvester would supply the power in broadband. In
this section, the road spectrum of the measured agricultural machinery
is applied to the shaking table, and then the measurement is imple­
mented. The road spectrum data was measured at the farmland and the
road transportation conditions. The average speed is about Fig. 7(a)
shows the measured acceleration and its displacement spectrum of
agricultural machinery. The displacement of the road spectrum must be
in line with reality and entirely correct. An integration program is
compiled to obtain the right displacement. FFT transform of the time-
domain signal, integral frequency domain transformation and phase
transformation is the core ideas.
To be specific, the program is composed of three main parts. The first
part contains the basic parameter setting, e.g., the maximum and min­
imum cut-off frequencies, establishing the time vectors, and determining
more than and closest to the power of 2 as the FFT length. The second
part consists of the FFT transformation, frequency spacing calculation,
subscript calculation of specified frequency band corresponding to fre­
quency array, angular frequency interval calculation, establishing the
positive and negative discrete angular frequency vectors, and con­
structing variable vector of angular frequency taking integral times as
index. The last part includes integral frequency domain transformation,
one time and two times integral phase transformation, eliminating the
frequency component outside the range of the specific positive and
negative frequency band and the Inverse Fast Fourier Transformation.
Finally, the integral displacement can be acquired by using n elements of
the real part of IFFT multiplied by the unit transformation coefficient.
We finally acquire the real displacement through repeated adjusting of
the maximum and minimum cut-off frequencies, as shown in Fig. 7(a) in
the red curve. The displacement amplitude is about 10 mm. It is the large
displacement excitation.
Fig. 7(b) shows the laboratory measurement of the energy. Fig. 7(c)
is the enlarged energy. When the energy harvester oscillates under the
measured road spectrum, it will generate the induced voltage. The
rectification circuit must be developed because the AC voltage will not
supply the sensor. Fig. 7(d) illustrates that the rectifier and energy
storage circuit, which is used to convert the alternating current to the
direct current and guarantee the stability of the output voltage. Fig. 7(e)
demonstrates the test result of the stable DC output, which is 4.5 V. We
noticed that the DC output voltage reached 4.5 V in 12 s when the road
spectrum random vibration test was implanted (the first 13 s in the road
spectrum is the time interval of the engine start to the pennisetum sinese
roxb harvester running)and the DC output voltage just started to
P. Wang et al. Journal of Cleaner Production 366 (2022) 132897

Fig. 5. The chart of the sinusoidal sweeping test processing:(a) the curve of acceleration frequency-domain,(b) the curve of displacement time-domain,(c) the control
software, (d) the shaker, (e) the induced voltage in the oscilloscope, (f) the contrast of the measured and the filtered signals, (g) the contrast of the simulation and the
tested results.

7
P. Wang et al.
Fig. 6. The fixed frequency test results: (a) 5Hz, 40 mm peak to peak amplitude excitation,(b) 5Hz, 20 mm peak to peak amplitude excitation,(c) The generated
voltages with load resistance variation,(d) The generated powers with load resistance variation.
decrease in about 6 min after the test completed. Vibration excitation
acceleration, excitation amplitude and the excitation frequencies are the
significant factors that influence the performance of the energy har­
vesting. Because of the intermittent working condition of the vibration
energy harvester influenced by the external vibration source, the EM
circuit must have two basic functions: rectification (AC to DC) and
voltage stabilization. The sensor must be supplied by the stable DC
power. The startup voltage of the EM circuit is 3.3V. If the input RMS of
the AC voltage is less than this value, the circuit will not be started and
there will be no DC output. As shown in Fig. 7(f), we can see that the
circuit will be started from 5 to 18.3 Hz under the aforementioned ex­
citations. It is noteworthy that the circuit has a supercapacitor that
stores the additional harvested energy. The circuit will continuously
power the sensor for a while when there is no vibration energy input. If
the energy harvester works in the low vibration excitation acceleration,
excitation amplitude and the excitation frequencies, the RMS of the
induced AC voltage is less than 3.3V, the circuit will not be started and
can not achieve stable voltage. All the data verifies the circuit has
excellent DC output stability and high energy storage capacity.
The schematic of the circuit are shown in Fig. 7(g). The circuit in­
cludes a charge pump, a boost control circuit, an energy storage circuit,
and a power management circuit. The charge pump is connected to the
boost control circuit, the boost control circuit is connected to the energy
storage circuit, the boost control circuit is connected to the power
management circuit, and the power management circuit is connected to
the charge pump. It can work at a lower starting current and starting
voltage, and adapt to the energy collection condition under the condi­
tion of low vibration amplitude. The hierarchical energy management
mode can maintain high working efficiency at different energy input
levels, without external active chips and bias voltages, and without
additional auxiliary power supplies. Additional energy from vibration
could be stored by the supercapacitor of the energy management circuit
for continued use by the sensors. The author conducted a field test. As
shown in Fig. 7(h), when the vibration energy is abundant, the excess
energy captured is stored in the supercapacitor or the battery through
the energy management circuit. When the output power of the energy
harvester is insufficient, the energy can be replenished through the
battery. When the circuit load (sensor or wireless transmission module)
requires instantaneous high current, it can be quickly discharged
through the supercapacitor to meet the power requirements of the
8
Journal of Cleaner Production 366 (2022) 132897
wireless transmission of sensor data. The DC voltage could be promoted
to 5 V by adding DC/DC boost converter and powering the range sensor
in the Table 2. The sensor parameters are listed in Table 2 in detail.
In the laboratory test, the proposed energy harvester had good per­
formance in capturing vibration energy. To verify its practicability, we
installed the device on actual agricultural machinery and implemented
the test as shown in Supplementary Video 1. The experiment shows that
the proposed device could effectively harvest the vibration energy from
the road excitation and convert the alternating current into 4.5 V DC
stable output.
3.4. Performance evaluation
In this section, performance indices of electromagnetic vibration
energy harvesters, such as maximum output voltage, maximum output
power, and normalized power density, are listed for performance com­
parison. Generally speaking, power density is the most direct index for
performance evaluation. However, normalized power is used instead in
Table 3 due to the diverse volumes and working environment of
different energy harvesters.
Table 3 lists the detailed parameters of the other electromagnetic
energy harvesters. From the table, we can see that the normalized power
is relatively low due to the influence of its volume. However, the
maximum output voltage and maximum output power are the largest. It
illustrates that the proposed energy harvester has high power density
output, which could supply the displacement sensor.
4. Conclusion
This paper proposes a profiling mechanism with a vibration energy
harvester. The mechanism avoids the disadvantages of environmental
pollution caused by the battery power supply in the past, and the energy
of the designed system comes from the renewable vibration energy in
the environment. Vibration energy can be effectively converted into
electrical energy through vibration energy harvesters. The mechanism
not only achieves efficient powering of smart sensors but also works
continuously. In this paper, sinusoidal sweeping tests with low fre­
quency and large displacement, fixed frequency tests and the road
spectrum stochastic vibration test are completed, indicating a promising
approach for powering the range sensor applied in the agricultural
P. Wang et al. Journal of Cleaner Production 366 (2022) 132897

Fig. 7. Road spectrum data and the experiment data: (a) acceleration, displacement time domain curve, (b) Road spectrum vibration test, (c) the energy harvester,
(d) the rectifier and energy storage circuit, (e) the DC voltage after rectification, (f) The results of the sinusoidal sweeping test,(g) the Schematic of the EM circuit,(h)
On-site testing setup of vibration-based energy harvesting by profiling mechanism and its application in agricultural machinery.

machinery. Conclusions are obtained as follows:

Table 2
The parameters of the ultrasonic sensor.
(1) The mathematical model of the proposed energy harvester was
Item Value Item Value established in the Comsol software. The simulation results are in
Measuring range 2–400 cm Average current ≤20 mA accordance with the experimental data under the sinusoidal
Range resolution 5 mm Input voltage 3.3–5V sweeping excitation. The proposed device has a high power
Dimension 3.3*4.1*2.3 cm Mass 12g output density under low frequency and large displacement
excitation.
(2) In the sinusoidal sweeping and fixed frequency tests, the peak-
peak voltage and power of the proposed device reach about 44
V and 113 mW under low frequency and large displacement,

9
P. Wang et al. Journal of Cleaner Production 366 (2022) 132897

Table 3
Comparison of efficiency of electromagnetic vibration energy harvesters.
References Transduction Operating Coil Applied The maximum Max. peak Prototype Normalized power
mechanism frequency (Hz) turns Acceleration peak–peak load Output volume (cm3) (μ Wcm− 3g− 2)
(g) voltages(V) power
(mW)

Kecik et al. (Kecik and Electromagnetic 3.2–24 12740 4.5 11.6 67 101.7 32.53
Mitura, 2020) Electromagnetic 61 3000 0.23 0.1436 2.114 × 1 39.96
Baker et al. (Baker 10− 3
et al., 2012)
Ashraf et al. (Ashraf Electromagnetic 10 – 1.0 2.624 1.8 27.48 65.74
et al., 2013)
Maltings et al. ( Electromagnetic 152 – 1.0 – 2.9 6 483.3
Constantinou and Roy,
2016)
Nammari et al. ( Electromagnetic 15.5 – 1.0 3.6 9.7 – 133
Nammari et al., 2018b)
Aldawood et al. ( Electromagnetic 5–15 1950 0.4 6.9 82 236.2 500
Aldawood et al., 2019)
Halim et al. (Halim Cho Electromagnetic 5.17 400 2.06 1.52 11.89 6.47 78.47
et al., 2015)
This work Electromagnetic 5–20 16000 2 44.29 113.34 720.6 39.32

respectively. It demonstrates that the proposed energy harvester
has a good power generation capacity under the condition of low
frequency and large displacement.
(3) In the road spectrum stochastic test of the agricultural machinery,
the displacement amplitude is about 10 mm. As a result, the DC
output voltage reached 4.5V within 12 s and remained stable
during the circuit spectrum test when the random vibration test
of the circuit spectrum was implanted. The test justifies the
functionality of the proposed energy harvester for powering the
laser range sensor applied in intelligent agricultural machinery.
(4) The intelligent geodetic displacement profiling mechanism
powered by vibration energy harvesting proposed in this paper is
an environment-friendly and sustainable working mechanism.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Peigen Wang: led the entire manuscript effort and came up with the
research question, designed the study approach, conducted the field test,
conducted vibration tests, performed the data sampling and sensitivity
analysis, wrote the paper and responded to the reviewer and editor
comments. Mingyuan Gao: led the entire manuscript effort and came
up with the research question, designed the study approach, designed
the laboratory test. Yuhua Sun: provided supplementary data and
analysis, designed the laboratory test. Huanyu Zhang: established the
electrometrical model of the electromagnetic energy harvesting system,
conducted the field test. Yun Liao: established the electrometrical
model of the electromagnetic energy harvesting system, conducted the
field test. Shouyong Xie: led the entire manuscript effort and came up
with the research question, designed the study approach, conducted
vibration tests, performed the data sampling and sensitivity analysis,
wrote the paper and responded to the reviewer and editor comments.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
The authors appreciate the support of the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (Grant No. 52008343) and Fundamental Research
Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. SWU-KT22020).Chongq­
ing Science and Technology Bureau (Contract No. cstc2019jscx-
gksbX0148).
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.132897.
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