Dynamic Simulation of a Fe-Ga Energy Harvester Prototype Through a Preisach-Type Hysteresis Model

This paper presents the modeling of an Fe-Ga energy harvester prototype, within a large range of values of operating parameters (mechanical preload, amplitude and frequency of dynamic load, electric load resistance). The simulations, based on a hysteretic Preisach-type model, employ a voltage-driven finite element formulation using the fixed-point technique, to handle the material nonlinearities. Due to the magneto-mechanical characteristics of Fe-Ga, a preliminary tuning must be performed for each preload to individualize the fixed point constant, to ensure a good convergence of the method. This paper demonstrates how this approach leads to good results for the Fe-Ga prototype. The relative discrepancies between experimental and computational values of the output power remain lower than 5% in the entire range of operating parameters considered.