9. Energy Harvesting MR Dampers

Energy-harvesting dampers have received a great deal of attention since the early 1990s. An attractive feature of these dampers is their ability to recover kinetic energy normally dissipated by conventional dampers. In this chapter the authors are concerned with an energy-harvesting device which comprises three main components: an MR damper, a power generator and a conditioning electronics unit. The MR damper and the power generator are integrated into a stand-alone device. In the chapter the authors outline the design structure of the power generator and its operating principle based on the formulated electromagnetic field equations and discuss the results of its experimental testing compared against numerical data. They describe the design structure and model of the MR damper, and then compare the experimental characteristics of the device with those obtained in numerical procedures.