On the refined modeling of the force distribution in a bistable magnetoelastic energy harvesting system due to a magnetic field

Abstract: The problem of a bistable magnetoelastic beam under base excitation was discussed in [1] under the aspect of chaotic behaviour in mechanical systems. Three decades later the system was used in [2] to design an energy harvesting system which performs well under harmonic excitation for a broad range of excitation frequencies due to its bistability. The initial modeling was tailored to obtain a model with one degree of freedom based on the assumption that the magnetic force acts on the beam tip only. A more appropriate model can be found when considering a distributed force along the beam. The authors present the force distribution on a ferromagnetic beam due to the magnetic field of two permanent magnets. A semi-analytic method is used to compute the magnetic field. The force distribution can in future be used to derive a refined nonlinear dynamical model for the ferromagnetic elastic beam. (© 2016 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)