Design and experiments of a feedback energy circuit for the active suspensions with an electromagnetic linear actuator.

Electromagnetic linear actuator (EMLA) is an alternative of the conventional damper in vehicle suspensions and harvests suspensions vibration energy which is wasted generally. Due to large variations of its Back Electromotive Force (Back-EMF), it will thus be interest to investigate how to recycle the electricity efficiently. In this paper, to improve the recycling efficiency of the EMLA, a feedback energy circuit featured with combination of parallel switchover supercapacitors technology and a boost-buck DC-DC converter is proposed on the basis of the generating characteristics of a newly designed EMLA. By modeling the feedback energy circuit, its dynamic characteristics are simulated and its efficiency is investigated. The results of simulations and experiments show that the feedback energy circuit can achieve a wide range of energy recovery regardless of large variations of Back-EMF induced by the EMLA. Simultaneously, by keeping the boost-buck ratio less than 3, the efficiency of energy recovery is high, in some cases could reach 94%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]