title: Research on a power management system for thermoelectric generators to drive wireless sensors on a spindle unit.
abstract: Thermoelectric energy harvesting is emerging as a promising alternative energy source to drive wireless sensors in mechanical systems. Typically, the waste heat from spindle units in machine tools creates potential for thermoelectric generation. However, the problem of low and fluctuant ambient temperature differences in spindle units limits the application of thermoelectric generation to drive a wireless sensor. This study is devoted to presenting a transformer-based power management system and its associated control strategy to make the wireless sensor work stably at different speeds of the spindle. The charging/discharging time of capacitors is optimized through this energy-harvesting strategy. A rotating spindle platform is set up to test the performance of the power management system at different speeds. The experimental results show that a longer sampling cycle time will increase the stability of the wireless sensor. The experiments also prove that utilizing the optimal time can make the power management system work more effectively compared with other systems using the same sample cycle.
authors.affiliation: School of Mechanical Engineering, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou 310018, China. ttaidttaid@163.com.
authors.forename: Sheng
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: The State Key Lab of Fluid Power Transmission and Control, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China. yaoxinhuazju@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Xinhua
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Yao
authors.affiliation: The State Key Lab of Fluid Power Transmission and Control, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China. fjz@zju.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Jianzhong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Fu
mesh_terms: D011211:Electric Power Supplies; D004736:Energy-Generating Resources; D004867:Equipment Design / Q000295:instrumentation; D059015:Wireless Technology / Q000295:instrumentation*