Journal of Sound and Vibration 333 (2014) 39043916

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Journal of Sound and Vibration

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

Integration of shock absorption and energy harvesting

using a hydraulic rectifier
Chuan Li a,b, Rongrong Zhu a, Ming Liang b,n, Shuai Yang b
a
Engineering Laboratory for Detection, Control and Integrated Systems, Chongqing Technology and Business University,
Chongqing 400067, China
b
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Ottawa, Ottawa K1N 6N5, Canada

a r t i c l e in f o

abstract

Article history:
Received 24 November 2013
Received in revised form
1 March 2014
Accepted 8 April 2014
Handling Editor: D.J. Wagg
Available online 3 May 2014

Hydraulic shock absorbers have been widely used to dissipate kinetic energy of the shocks
into surrounding environment. By employing oscillatory motion to drive power generator,
the shock energy can be converted into electricity for harvesting. However, the frequent
bidirectional oscillation of the generator can cause a large impact force. This further leads
to deteriorated energy harvesting performance, moving parts fatigue, and even system
failure. As such, this study introduces four check values to form a hydraulic rectifier to
integrate the shock absorption and energy harvesting functionalities. The bidirectional
oscillation of the shock and the vibration is converted into unidirectional rotation to drive
the generator. Following the proposed concept, a prototype energy-harvesting shock
absorber has been designed and fabricated. An electromechanical model has also been
developed to examine the response behavior of the prototype device. The prototype
performance has been characterized based on the experimental results from three test
setups. Both mechanical and electrical parameters of the electromechanical model have
been identified based on our cyclic loading experiments. The results have shown that the
developed energy-harvesting shock absorber is capable of harvesting the energy and
absorbing the shock simultaneously. In our experiments, a maximum of 248.8 W
instantaneous power (a maximum of 114.1 W on average) has been captured and a
maximum of 38.81% energy harvesting efficiency has been achieved via harmonic
excitation with an amplitude of 8 mm and a frequency of 2 Hz, when the load resistance
is tuned to 7.5 .
& 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Introduction
Shock absorbers, sometimes also known as dampers, are mechanical devices designed to smooth out shocks and to damp
vibrations [1]. As one of the basic mechanical components, the shock absorber has been widely used in automobiles,
motorcycles, wheeled or tracked vehicles, aircrafts, as well as some industrial machines [2]. Hysteresis of structural material
[3], dry friction [4], fluid friction [5] and magnetic effects [6] has been used by the absorbers for damping shock impulses.
Hydraulic shock absorbers are capable of yielding greater damping force mainly by means of fluid friction, and are reliable to

Corresponding author. Tel.: 1 613 562 5800x6269; fax: 1 613 562 5177.
E-mail address: liang@eng.uOttawa.ca (M. Liang).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jsv.2014.04.020
0022-460X/& 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

C. Li et al. / Journal of Sound and Vibration 333 (2014) 39043916

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work under harsh impulses. For these reasons, the hydraulic absorbers enjoy one of the largest shares in the current
absorber market.
The hydraulic shock absorber works by converting kinetic energy into acoustic or thermal energy, which is then released
into the oil in the absorber and the surrounding environment. Essentially, the shock absorbers, passive or active, are energywasting components [7]. At the mWatt level or Watt level, vibration energy harvesting has been well investigated using
piezoelectric [8], electromagnetic [9] or electrostatic [10] transducers. The Watt-level energy consumed by shock absorbers
also has a great potential for engineering applications if harvested. For example, for a passenger car traversing on poor road
surface at 30 mph (13.4 m/s), the wasted energy of four shock absorbers is approximately 200 W [11,12]. Moreover, the
dissipated energy may generate noises and heats that are harmful to vehicle components and environment. Therefore,
energy harvesting from the shock absorption is a win-win strategy.
Different approaches have been suggested for integrating the energy harvesting with the shock absorption. These
approaches can fall into either direct-driven or indirect-driven categories. In the direct-driven category, linear generators or
similar transducers have generally been used to harvest the energy of the vibratory excitation directly. Suda et al. [13]
developed a hybrid suspension system by employing a linear DC generator to harvest vibration energy for active vibration
control. Choi et al. [14] suggested integrating an electromagnetic-induction device into a magnetorheological damper for
harvesting energy from shocks and vibrations. Chen and Liao [15] introduced a self-sensing magnetorheological damper
that integrated energy harvesting, dynamic sensing and damping into one device. A linear multi-pole electromagnetic
generator was used to collect the energy at around 0.1 W. Choi and Wereley [16] proposed a self-powered magnetorheological damper integrating a spring-mass with an electromagnetic induction device. Bogdan [17] introduced an electromagnetic power generator for a linear magnetorheological damper. The advantage of the devices that follow a direct-driven
approach to the integration of energy harvesting and the shock absorption is their structural simplicity. However, the
downside is their limited energy harvesting capacity restricted by the limited travel of the shock.
To increase the travel of the vibratory excitations, some researchers have employed the indirect-driven methods to
capture more energy for the energy-harvesting shock absorber. Choi et al. [18] applied a rackpinion mechanism to amplify
the vibration response for providing more power to control an electrorheological damper. Li and Tse [19] fabricated an
energy-harvesting hydraulic damper using a hydraulic motor to transmit the vibration into the bidirectional rotation of an
electromagnetic generator. The maximum power harvested by such a structure was 435.1 W(ms  1)  1 in the experiments.
Nevertheless, the energy harvesting efficiency was dropped at higher frequencies due to the frequent bidirectional
oscillation of the generator. Fang et al. [20] developed a hydraulic electromagnetic shock absorber using separated
components. The energy recovery efficiency is only 16.6% in 10 Hz 3 mm excitation. Li et al. [21] introduced a mechanical
motion rectifier to commutate the oscillatory motion for an energy-harvesting shock absorber. The mechanical motion
rectifier is composed of a pair of rack and pinion, one shaft, three bevel gears and two roller clutches. An experiment on a
smooth paved road shows that more than 15 W of electricity can be harvested at 15 mph speed. Aly et al. [22] used a lever
mechanism incorporating a smart damper to improve flexural response of a very slender building. Li et al. [23,24] applied an
inverse screw transmission for a two-terminal flywheel to convert the oscillatory vibration into the reciprocating rotation of
the flywheel. By adjusting the transmission ratio between the rectilinear vibration and the bidirectional rotation, an electrohydraulic approach was developed to realize a variable inertial mass [25].
In this research, we propose an energy-harvesting shock absorber that employs a hydraulic rectifier to integrate the
energy harvesting with the shock absorption. The hydraulic rectifier consists of four check valves to commutate the
oscillatory shock to a unidirectional rotation for an electromagnetic generator. As the hydraulic nature is preserved in
the integration, the reliability and durability inherent in the hydraulic shock absorber can be sustained.
The rest of the paper is structured as follows. The conceptual design of the integrated shock absorber and the energy
harvester is proposed in Section 2. The fabrication of the prototype device is also described in this section. Section 3 presents
an electromechanical model to describe the mechanical and the electrical behaviors of the energy-harvesting shock
absorber. Section 4 reports the experimental results and discussion. Conclusions are drawn in Section 5.
2. Design and prototyping
In this section, our design idea of the energy-harvesting shock absorber based on a hydraulic rectifier is first illustrated.
Based on this idea, the fabrication details of the prototype device are then elaborated.
2.1. Conceptual design of the energy-harvesting shock absorber
Energy-harvesting absorbers with motion transmissions are capable of converting the rectilinear vibration into a
bidirectional rotation, yielding the electricity via the power generator. The frequent reversing of the generator,
unfortunately, causes a large impact force, which further leads to deteriorated energy harvesting performance, moving
parts fatigue and even system failure. For this reason, we rectify the bidirectional oscillation to a unidirectional rotation of
the generator. Employing the hydraulic circuit rather than the mechanical transmission leads to smoother response to
irregular shocks. For real applications, a hydraulic system is more durable due to the reduced wear and tear resulting from
the rigid, frequent contacts between the mechanical components as compared with a non-hydraulic system.

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C. Li et al. / Journal of Sound and Vibration 333 (2014) 39043916

Electromagnetic generator
Load

21
Hydraulic motor
22

Piston

12

A
Hydraulic
rectifier

B
11

Three-phase
electrical rectifier

Rod
Cylinder
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the proposed energy-harvesting shock absorber.

The conceptual design of the proposed absorber is illustrated in Fig. 1. Similar to conventional hydraulic absorbers, the
core of our design is a hydraulic cylinder, which is divided into two chambers by a piston. Two rods, across the two
chambers, connect with two sides of the piston respectively. The reason of using the two-rod cylinder is to guarantee
identical oil flow between the two chambers. One of the rods is attached directly to one terminal of the absorber, while
another one is sheltered by a cap, to which another terminal is connected. As shown in Fig. 1, the two ports (11 and 12) of
the cylinder are connected to the two ports (21 and 22) of a hydraulic motor via a hydraulic rectifier. The output shaft of the
hydraulic motor is connected to a 3-phase electromagnetic generator, whose output electricity is used to power a load
through a 3-phase electrical rectifier. The proposed conceptual design makes it possible for the rectilinear vibration between
the two terminals of the absorber to be used to drive the unidirectional rotation of the hydraulic motor in a smooth manner,
and generate the electricity on the load at the same time. The shock energy is absorbed as a result of: (1) energy harvesting
by the load, and (2) energy dissipation through the oil flow and the motion transmission. Apparently, shock absorption and
energy harvesting can be achieved simultaneously using the proposed design.
As shown in Fig. 1, the hydraulic rectifier consists of four check valves, namely, AD, in a bridge configuration. In response
to the positive vibration (i.e., tension between the two terminals of the absorber), the oil inside the left chamber flows into
the right chamber via the path of port 11, valve A, port 21, port 22, valve D and port 12. Supposing the rotation of the
hydraulic motor in response to the flow direction from the port 21 to the port 22 is clockwise, the positive vibration results
in the clockwise rotation of the hydraulic motor. Under the negative vibratory excitation (i.e., compression between the two
terminals), the oil flows through port12, valve C, port 21, port 22, valve B and port 11 successively. In this case, the hydraulic
motor still rotates clockwise. Consequently, the rotation of the hydraulic motor (or the power generator) is always
unidirectional, though the vibratory excitation is bidirectional.
Table 1 demonstrates the electromechanical transmission of the system in response to the external shocks and vibrations. For
both the tensile (positive half-circle) and the compressive (negative half-circle) excitations, the hydraulic motor and the power
generator rotate in the positive direction. The three phases of the generated electricity are commutated by the 3-phase electrical
rectifier. According to the principle of the 3-phase electrical rectifier, the waveform of the output voltage on the load represents
the sum of the moduli of the three phases. As shown in Table 1, in the mechanical domain, the rotations of the hydraulic motor
and the power generator are always unidirectional thanks to the application of the hydraulic rectifier. In the electrical domain,
the waveform of the output voltage is also unidirectional owing to the use of the 3-phase electrical rectifier.

2.2. Fabrication of the prototype device

Based on the conceptual design as shown in Fig. 1, a prototype device integrating both the energy-harvesting and the shock
absorption was fabricated in the Engineering Laboratory for Detection, Control and Integrated Systems at Chongqing Technology
and Business University. As shown in Fig. 3, a steel frame with the rod cap is fabricated to accommodate all the parts shown in
Fig. 1. The oil cylinder with an internal diameter of 40 mm and a maximum travel of 80 mm was installed on the steel frame. The
hydraulic rectifier and the hydraulic motor are fixed on the two sides of the cylinder. The hydraulic rectifier is composed of four
check valves, each of which has nominal diameter of 10 mm and opening pressure of 0.2 MPa. The displacement of the hydraulic
motor (BMM8-MAE) was 8.2 mL/rev. The permanent-magnet generator was connected to the output shaft of the hydraulic motor
via a coupling. The nominal rotational speed of the generator was 500 rpm. The output of the power generator was connected to
the electrical rectifier (30 A, 600 V), which was used to power the load resistor directly.
To assemble the hydraulic circuit, four custom-made brass tubes (8 mm in diameter) were used to connect ports 11, 12,
21, 22 with the hydraulic rectifier, respectively. For oil filling, exhausting and refilling as necessary, a release valve 8 mm in
nominal diameter was also connected to port 11.

3. Electromechanical modeling
The electrical response of the electromagnetic generator is first modeled in Section 3.1. The shock force response in the
mechanical domain is subsequently analyzed in Section 3.2. Through combining the electrical and the mechanical domain

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Table 1
Electromechanical transmission of the proposed design.
Scene

Tensile excitation

Compressive excitation

Full-circle excitation

11-A-21- 22-D-12

12-C-21- 22-B-11

11-A-21-22- D-12-C-21- 22-B-11

Shock waveform

Oil flow path

Hydraulic motor

Power generator

3-phase electricity

Output voltage

Fig. 2. Prototype device.

models together, an electromechanical model is proposed in Section 3.3 to illustrate the system response to the vibratory
excitation.
3.1. Energy harvesting analysis
For the 3-phase electromagnetic generator (Fig. 2), the energy harvesting circuit can be represented by the model shown
in Fig. 3 [26].
The rotational motion of the hydraulic motor can lead to a 3-phase electromotive force, i.e.,
V e1 t Em sin t; V e2 t Em sin t 2=3; and V e3 t Em sin t 4=3;

(1)

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C. Li et al. / Journal of Sound and Vibration 333 (2014) 39043916

V e1

L1

R1

V e2

L2

R2

V e3

L3

R3

Rd

Fig. 3. Energy harvesting circuit of the proposed absorber.

where Ve1, Ve2 and Ve3 denote the electromotive voltages at 3 phases, represents the angular velocity, t is the time, and Em
is the electromotive voltage that is given by
Em km ;

(2)

where km stands for the electromotive voltage constant. For the 3-phase electromagnetic generator, one has
L1 L2 L3 ; and R1 R2 R3 ;

(3)

where L1, L2 and L3 represent the internal inductances of the three phases respectively, R1, R2 and R3 denote the internal
resistances of the three phases respectively. The circuit equations of the three phases can be derived using Kirchhoffs
voltage laws as
di1 t
 i1 tR1 i1 tRd 0
dt
di2 t
 i2 tR2  i2 tRd 0
V e2 t L2
dt
di3 t
 i3 tR3  i3 tRd 0
V e3 t L3
dt

V e1 t  L1

For the 3-phase electrical rectifier as shown in Fig. 3, the voltage on the load resistor Rd can be determined by
p
vt ji1 tj ji2 tj ji3 tjRd  3 modi1 tRd :

(4)

(5)

where mod is the modulo function. The power Pd harvested by load resistor Rd can be therefore calculated as
P d t vt2 =Rd :

(6)

3.2. Mechanical force responses to the vibratory shocks

With a shock excitation x(t), the mechanical behavior of the proposed absorber can be approximated by Fig. 4.
As shown in Fig. 4, the shock excitation x(t) can be divided as two constituents: the backlash x1(t) caused by the hydraulic
transmission, and the effective excitation x2(t) to drive the generator. Upon neglecting the elasticity of the system, there are
five difference forces related to x1(t) and/ or x2(t), respectively. Following the mechanical model of the shock absorber, the
five forces can be introduced in detail as follows.
(1) Oil damping force Fd(t). The flow of the oil inside the absorber results in a viscous damping effect, which is given by
F d t cs x_ t:

(7)

where cs denotes the equivalent viscous damping coefficient of the hydraulic system.
(2) Friction force Ff(t). Supposing the value of the piston friction is f0, the friction force is formulated as
F f t sgnx_ tjf 0 j:

(8)

where x_ t is the first derivative of x(t) with respect to t, and sgn(.) is the sign function.
(3) Inertial force Fi(t). The inertial force is mainly caused by the rotation of the rotor of the generator. Letting m denote the
equivalent inertial mass of the rotor, the inertial force is given by
F i t mx 2 t:

(9)

It should be noted that the equivalent inertial mass m is neither the gravitational mass nor the moment of inertial of the
rotor. Instead, the equivalent inertial mass is associated with both the transmission ratio and the moment of inertia of
the rotor. For more details on the calculation of the equivalent inertial mass m, one can refer to our previous work [25].

C. Li et al. / Journal of Sound and Vibration 333 (2014) 39043916

3909

Fd
Ff
Fi
Fe
Fv
x2
x

x1

Fig. 4. Mechanical model of the proposed shock absorber.

(4) Energy-harvesting induced force Fe(t). According to the law of conservation of energy, the harvested energy by the load
resistor Rd is equal to the input power of the generator, i.e.,

Combining Eqs. (1), (2) and (4) results in

it

F e tx_ 2 t it2 Rd :

(10)


p
3 mod

(11)


km
:
jL1 R1 Rd

Supposing
t k x_ t;

(12)

one can obtain the following equation from Eqs. (10), (11) and (12)
F e t ce x_ 2 t;

(13)

where

ce 3 mod

km k
jL1 R1 Rd

2
Rd :

(14)

(5) Opening force Fv(t) of the hydraulic rectifier. Denoting the opening pressure of a check valve by Pc, for the hydraulic
rectifier as shown in Fig. 1, one has
(
F v t 2P c Sc ; x1 t 0
:
(15)
jx1 tj 40
F v t 0;
where Sc is the cross-sectional area of the cylinder.
One may notice that there are two conditions for the mechanical model as shown in Fig. 4: contact and backlash
conditions. If the maximum backlash is and the bidirectional backlashes are identical, one has
Zjx1 tj Z 0:

(16)

3.3. Electromechanical model of the proposed design

Having analyzed the five force components and the contact/ backlash conditions, the mechanical governing equation of
the absorber in response to the shock excitation x(t) can be therefore obtained as
(
Ft F d t F f t F i t F e t F v t; x1 t 0
:
(17)
jx1 tj 4 0
Ft F d t F f t;
The proposed design can be regarded as a system with one input x(t) and two output variables F(t) and v(t) (or, i(t), Pd(t)).
Based on the above mechanical governing equation and letting y1(t)F(t)  Ff(t), the mechanical transfer function under the
backlash condition is given by
y t
TF 1 s  cs s2 1 :
xt

(18)

where s is Laplaces complex variable, TF1(s) is the mechanical transfer function under the backlash condition. Under the
contact condition, moreover, letting y2(t) F(t)  Ff(t) Fv(t) and omitting the effect of the backlash, the mechanical transfer
function TF2(s) can be expressed as
y t
TF 2 s  ms2 cs s ce s2 2
xt

(19)

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C. Li et al. / Journal of Sound and Vibration 333 (2014) 39043916

On the other hand, the transfer function between x(t) and v(t) is valid only under the contact condition. Combining Eqs. (6),
(13) and (14) yields the electrical transfer function


p
km k
vt
(20)
s2
TF 3 s  3 mod
xt
L1 s R1 Rd
It is worth noting that the electromechanical model as illustrated by Eqs. (1820) is a simplified expression as most of
nonlinear parameters are omitted or linearized. Nevertheless, the above electromechanical model can provide an intuitive
understanding on the proposed energy-harvesting shock absorber. Hence we apply the above electromechanical model to
analyze the experimental results as illustrated in the following section.
4. Experimental results and discussion
In this section, three test rigs are introduced to characterize the electrical parameters, mechanical parameters and the
performance of the prototype device, respectively. The modeling results are also compared with the experimental results.
4.1. Experiments for electrical parameter characterization
An experiment (namely, test setup #1) was designed to characterize the electrical parameters of the power generator. As
shown in Fig. 5, the power generator was removed from the prototype device and was fixed on a platform. A 370 W
electrical motor was directly connected to the generator via a coupling, on which an encoder (1000 pulses per revolution)
was fixed to measure the angular velocity of the generator. A frequency inverter (400 W, 1/3-phase) was used to drive the
motor with adjustable speed. The pulse output of the encoder was counted by a USB data acquisition (DAQ) and was sent to
a laptop computer. The acquired number of pauses, along with the sampling time, are used to calculate the instantaneous
angular velocity ((t)) of the generator. An adjustable resistor (150 W, 050 ) was connected to the electrical rectifier of the
generator as the electrical load (Rd). During the experiments, the electrical load was variable achieved by adjusting the
resistance of the resistor. The voltage (v(t)) of the load was measured by a multimeter and an oscillator. The multimeter is
more intuitional, while the waveform of the voltage can be more clearly observed by the oscillator.
As shown on the specification list of the generator, the static resistance and inductance are respectively 7.5 and 0.02 H. With
this observation, the resistance values during the experiments were set at 2.5 , 5 , 7.5 , 10 , 15 , 50 , respectively. At each
resistance level, we manually adjusted the rotational speed ranging from 30 rpm to 300 rpm. The measured voltage values over
the load are plotted in Fig. 6. Based on Eqs. (1)(6), km and R1 were tuned to find the best fitted parameters
fkmopt ; R1opt g arg min J uca ume J 22 ;

(21)

km ;R1

where kmopt and R1opt denote the optimal km and R1 parameters to be identified, uca() and ume() are respectively the calculated
(using Eqs. (4) and (6)) and the measured voltage values for a given , and J  J 2 stands for 2-norm operation. The right-hand side
of the above equation represents the parameter fittings of km and R1 under the condition of minimal error between the calculated
and the measured values.
With the fitting algorithm, the optimal parameters are found to be kmopt 0.57 V s/rad and R1opt 7.6 . The identified
parameters are then substituted into Eqs. (4) and (6). The calculated uca() values with different loads and different
rotational speeds can thus be obtained and plotted in the same figure. Comparing ume() with uca(), one can see that the
calculated values are consistent with the measured counterparts.
4.2. Experiments for mechanical parameter characterization
In this subsection, the prototype device excluding the power generator was tested as shown in Fig. 7 (test setup #2).
Since the power generator was removed, the influence of the electrical characteristics could be eliminated so as to facilitate
the mechanical parameter characterization. As shown in Fig. 7, the prototype (without the generator) was fixed on an
electro-hydraulic servo fatigue testing machine (20 kN), which was controlled by a desktop computer via a controller.
Motor

Encoder

Generator

Oscillator

Multimeter

Adjustable resistor

Inverter

DAQ

Fig. 5. Test setup #1 for the electrical parameter characterization.

Laptop

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3911

30

Voltage (V)

25
20
15
10
5
0

50

100
150
200
Rotational speed(rpm)

250

300

Fig. 6. Generated voltages vs loads and rotational speeds: The marked points are associated with the measured ume() values, while the lines denote the
calculated uca() values.

Laptop

Encoder
Specimen

Desktop
Controller

USB DAQ

Oscilloscope

Testing machine

Fig. 7. Test setup #2 for mechanical parameter identification.

The testing machine was driven by a hydraulic unit (30 L/min, to be shown in Fig. 11). According to the vibration signal (x(t))
predefined by the desktop computer, the lower terminal of the specimen moves up and down, yielding a unidirectional
rotation ((t)) of the hydraulic motor and a relative force (F(t)) between the two terminals of the specimen. To measure the
rotational speed of the output shaft of the hydraulic motor, the encoder (with a resolution of 1000 pulses per revolution),
the USB DAQ, and the laptop introduced in the previous subsection were again used for test setup #2. The oscilloscope as
introduced in Section 4.1 was used to monitor the output waveform of the encoder. The actual vibration displacement and
the mechanical force were acquired by the desktop computer via the controller.
There are 7 parameters, namely, Fv(t), k, , cs, f0, m and ce for the electromechanical description of the prototype device
using Eqs. (17)(20). As the power generator was disabled in this subsection, m and ce cannot be identified in this
subsection, while the other parameters can be obtained from test setup #2 as follows.
(1) Calculate Fv(t). As introduced in Section 2, the opening pressure of each check valve for the hydraulic rectifier is
0.2 MPa, and the cross-sectional area Sc of the cylinder is measured as 9.425  10  4 m2. One can calculate that the opening
force Fv(t) is 377 N when 0 (using Eq. (15)).
(2) Identify k and . Based on the above test setup, we applied cyclic loading to carry out the mechanical parameter
characterization experiments [27]. In the cyclic loading experiments, the excitation displacements between the two
terminals were defined as sinusoidal signals (x(t)X sin 2ft) with different amplitudes (X) and frequencies (f). Through
associating the measured vibratory displacement (xme(t)) with the measured force response (Fme(t)), one can estimate
mechanical model parameters as shown in Fig. 4. Fig. 8(a) displays the output of the encoder in response to a vibratory
excitation (excitation 1) x(t) 0.015sin 0.2t (X 15 mm and f 0.1 Hz). The encoder, unfortunately, can only count the
number of impulses. Hence we have to calculate the differentiation of the smoothed encoder output. In this way, one can
obtain the angular velocity me(t) that is plotted in Fig. 8(b). From the figure one can estimate two parameters: the backlash
of the transmissionE3 mm, and ca(t) 6.8|sin 0.2t|. Substituting the ca(t) and x(t) into Eq. (12) yields
(
k

765:96rad=m;
 765:96rad=m;

xt Z 0
:
xt o 0

(22)

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C. Li et al. / Journal of Sound and Vibration 333 (2014) 39043916

x104

(t)
Angular velocity(rad/s)

Number of impulses

1.5
1
0.5
0

10

15
Time(s)

20

25

6
4
2
0

30

(t)

Difference due to backlash

10

15

20

25

30

Time(s)

Fig. 8. Rotational motion of the hydraulic motor in response to x(t) 0.015sin 0.2t (excitation 1): (a) number of impulses collected by the encoder;
and (b) angular velocity.

Excitation2
Excitation3
Excitation4

1500
Backlash effect
1000

Force(N)

500
0
-500
-1000
-1500
-0.02 -0.015 -0.01 -0.005

0.005

0.01

0.015

0.02

Displacement(m)
Fig. 9. Damping loops of vibration inputs of excitations 2, 3 and 4 for identifying cs and f0. The dotted lines are generated by substituting csopt and f0opt into
Eq. (24).

It is worth noting that both k and may vary with the change of the shock excitations. In this research both parameters
are regarded as constants to simplify discussions.
(3) Identify cs and f0. In the cyclic loading method, a sinusoidal signal with greater amplitude-frequency ratio can be
approximated as a triangular one with slope |r| A2/(8f). After disabling Fi(t) and Fe(t), among all the mechanical forces,
only Fd(t) and Ff(t) are sensitive to the triangular excitation. According to Eq. (19), the steady-state response of the system is
given by
y2 tjt-1 

A2 f cs
:
2

(23)

As y2(t) F(t)  Ff(t)  Fv(t), the above equation can be rewritten as

jFtj  377  jf 0 jt-1

A2 f cs
:
2

(24)

In this way, one can tune cs and f0 to find the best fit between the measured and the calculated values:
fcsopt ; f 0opt g arg min J F ca t  F me t J 22 ;

(25)

cs ;f

where csopt and f0opt respectively denote the optimal cs and f0 parameters to be estimated, Fca(t) and Fme(t) are the calculated
(using Eqs. (17) and (24)) and the measured force values for the given excitation x(t). We then employ 0.015sin 0.4t
(excitation 2), 0.01sin 0.4t (excitation 3) and 0.015sin 0.2t (excitation 4) to drive the shock absorber, whose
responses are plotted in Fig. 9. It is noted that the measured vibratory displacements are not completely identical to the
predefined signal in the cyclic loading experiments. This is due to the difference between the signal input and the actuation
output of the testing machine. Based on the experimental results, one can search for the optimal parameters which are
found to be csopt 10,697 N s/m and f0opt 452 N, using the fitting algorithm expressed by Eq. (25).
The estimated optimal parameters csopt and fopt are in turn substituted into Eq. (24). The calculated damping loops in
response to the three excitations are also displayed in Fig. 9. Comparison between the calculated and the measured damping
loops indicates that there are differences occurred at the reversing time periods of the terminal. This is mainly caused by the
existence of the backlash .

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3913

Prototype
Controller
Hydraulic
unit

Desktop
Oscilloscope

Resistor

Testing machine

Fig. 10. The developed prototype device for energy-harvesting and shock absorption experiments (test setup # 3).

4.3. Energy-harvesting and shock absorption experiments

In this subsection, the test of the prototype device as shown in Fig. 2 was carried out using test setup #3 (Fig. 10). As the
encoder was replaced by the power generator in this subsection, the laptop computer and the USB DAQ were no longer used
in this test setup. Moreover, the output voltage of the energy-harvesting shock absorber was recorded by the oscilloscope
that was connected to the desktop computer for data acquisition. The adjustable resistor as shown in Fig. 5 was again used
as the load of the shock absorber. By associating the load resistance (Rd) with the instantaneous voltage (v(t)), one can
calculate the instantaneous power (Pd(t)) to be harvested. In this test setup, the measurement methods of the vibration
signal (x(t)) and the relative force (F(t)) acting on the shock absorber are the same as test setup #2 (acquired by the desktop
computer via the controller).
As of now, we have only 2 parameters, i.e., m and ce to be identified from Eq. (17). Since the two parameters are directly
related to the load, we take a 7.5- resistor as an example for parameter identification. Again, to drive the shock absorber,
we define the vibratory displacement x(t) in the computer. The experimental results can be used to find the optimal
ceopt|7.5 and mopt|7.5 using the fitting approach
fceopt ; mopt gj7:5 arg min J F ca t  F me t J 22 :
cs ;m

(26)

Letting excitation 5 denote the vibration signal 0.015sin t, Fig. 11(a) and (c) displays the mechanical and the electrical
responses of the energy-harvesting shock absorber, respectively. We then use 0.008sin 4t (excitation 6) to excite the
shock absorber, whose mechanical and electrical responses are displayed in Fig. 11(b) and (d), respectively. Using the above
fitting equation, the optimal parameter can be estimated as ceopt 5.185  104 N m/s and mopt 180 kg. The parameters ceopt
and mopt are in turn substituted into Eq. (17) to yield the calculated Fca(t) and Vca(t) which are also shown in the same figure.
One may notice that m (the equivalent inertial mass as shown in Eq. (9)) is very large comparing to the gravitational mass
of the rotor of the generator. The reason is that such a design can amplify the inertia of the rotor of the generator. Similar
observations have been made in the literature [25].
For the proposed structure, the energy harvesting performance is one of the main concerns. The harvested energy can be
calculated using Eq. (6), while the input power Pin(t) resulting from the vibratory excitation can be obtained by
P in t Ftx_ t:

(27)

The energy harvesting efficiency can therefore be calculated by combining Eqs. (6) and (27) as
tb

t ta

P d t
:
P in t

(28)

where [ta, tb] denotes the time interval of interest for the efficiency calculation. To be meaningful, the range [ta, tb] should be
at least no shorter than one period of the vibratory excitation. Fig. 11(e) and (f) display the comparisons between the input
power and the harvested power of the prototype device for excitation 5 and excitation 6, respectively. With excitation
5, the peak value of the harvested power is 43.2 W, with a mean value of 18.63 W. By contrast, excitation 6 generates
much more power with a peak value of 248.8 W and a mean of 114.1 W. Based on the above equation, the energy harvesting
efficiencies for the excitation 5 and excitation 6 inputs are 21.44% and 38.81%, respectively.
In addition to the excitation signal, the load resistance also plays an important role on energy harvesting efficiency. To
illustrate this, we use a single vibratory signal, x(t) 0.01sin 2t (excitation 7), and adjust the load resistance in the range
[2.5 , 50 ]. Fig. 12 shows the change of the energy harvesting efficiencies. When tuning resistance from 2.5 to 7.5 , the
efficiency increases with the rise of the load resistance. However, the efficiency drops if we further increase the resistance
above 7.5 , and the efficiency declines much faster when the resistance is higher than 15 (about twice of the internal
resistance). As shown in Fig. 12, the maximum efficiency (27.49%) occurs at 7.5 , which is almost identical to the internal

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C. Li et al. / Journal of Sound and Vibration 333 (2014) 39043916

F (t)

5000

F (t)

F (t)

F (t)

Force(N)

Force(N)

5000

-5000

-5000
-0.02

-0.01

0.01

-0.01

0.02

-0.005

25

Voltage(V)

Voltage(V)

0.01

V (t)

50

V (t)

Difference due to backlash

15
10
5

V (t)

40
30
20
10

0
0

0.5

1.5

2.5

3.5

0.2

0.4

Time(S)

0.6

0.8

Time(s)

250

800
Input power
Harvested power

Input power
Harvested power

600

Power(W)

200
Power(W)

0.005

60

V (t)

20

0
Displacement(m)

Displacement(m)

150
100

400

200

50
0

0
0

0.5

1.5

2
Time(s)

2.5

3.5

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

Time(s)

Fig. 11. Responses of the prototype device under 0.015sin t (excitation 5) and 0.008sin 4t (excitation 6), respectively. (a) and (b) present the
mechanical responses; (c) and (d) show the electrical responses; and (e) and (f) display the comparison between the input power and the harvested power
associated with the two excitations.

resistance of the generator. This suggests that impedance matching [28] is a feasible way towards optimal energy harvesting
with maximum harvesting efficiency.
Considering the capability of simultaneous shock absorption and energy harvesting, the proposed device has a promising
potential for real-world applications, e.g., as vehicle dampers. At this stage, however, the developed prototype device cannot
be directly used for such purposes yet. The reason is that the prototype device was developed using separated components
which make it slightly too bulky and heavy. A more compact design is required to reduce its size and to improve its
reliability for real applications, in particular for vehicles. In addition, the present structure is more expensive compared with
the existing vehicle shock absorbers because of the additional components including four check valves, a hydraulic motor,
and an electric. Therefore, a more compact yet cost-efficient design is highly desirable. The next phase of our research will
hence focus on the design optimization based on the size, weight and cost criteria.
5. Conclusions
In this paper, a hydraulic rectifier has been introduced in the development of an integrated device for simultaneous
shock absorption and energy harvesting. The bidirectional shock acting on the two terminals of a hydraulic absorber was
transformed into unidirectional rotation by the four check values of the rectifier. This unidirectional rotation was
subsequently employed to drive a power generator to harvest the shock energy. This improves the reliability and the
durability of the generator by eliminating the frequent reversing of the shock. An electromechanical model was also
developed to analyze the behavior of the structure. A prototype was fabricated and tested using three test setups and cyclic

C. Li et al. / Journal of Sound and Vibration 333 (2014) 39043916

3915

35

Efficiency(%)

30
25
20
15
10
5
0

10

20
30
Resistance( )

40

50

Fig. 12. Energy harvesting efficiencies with different load resistances, where the vibratory signal is fixed as 0.01sin 2t (excitation 7).

loading approach (in the second and third test setup). Our test results have demonstrated that a maximum of 248.8 W
instantaneous power with a mean of 114.1 W can be harvested and a maximum of 38.81% energy harvesting efficiency
can be achieved using the optimal load resistance (7.5 ) at a harmonic excitation with amplitude of 8 mm and frequency
of 2 Hz.
The experimental results show that both the vibratory excitation and the electrical load are directly related to the
electromechanical responses of the system. The energy harvesting efficiency can be further improved by reducing backlash,
mechanical and electrical loss factors of the structure. As the hydraulic nature is preserved in the integrated device, the
reliability and durability inherent in the hydraulic shock absorber can be sustained during shock absorption and energy
harvesting in real applications.

Acknowledgments
This work is supported in part by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (I2IPJ 387179 and
RGPIN 121433), the Ontario Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health (OT-SE-E50622), the Natural Science
Foundation Project of China (51375517), the Natural Science Foundation Project of CQ CSTC (2012JJJQ70001), and the Project
of Chongqing Innovation Team in University (KJTD201313). The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their valuable
comments and suggestions.
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