Power Electronics Control of an Energy Regenerative Mechatronic Damper

This paper presents the development of a power electronics controller for a proof-of-concept energy regenerative damper in vehicular applications. The damper consists of an efficient motion conversion mechanism to convert translational base vibration into reciprocating rotary motion, a brushless three-phase permanent-magnet rotary machine, and a three-phase power converter. A power electronics boost controller is developed to capture the generated electrical power and store it into a battery that allows overcoming kinematic nonlinearities in the motion conversion stage. To this end, a sliding-mode controller that can enforce a resistive behavior across the terminals of the rotary machine by regulating the converter's input current in real time is presented. Through the proposed approach, the mechanical damping coefficient of the system can be controlled, on demand, with an energy regenerative function. The performance of the developed system is evaluated under sinusoidal excitation inputs and transient conditions when operating with a damping coefficient of 650 N . s/m synthesized through power electronics and control. Experimental results that evaluate the performance of the proposed energy regenerative damper are presented.