Energy harvesting using martensite variant reorientation mechanism in a NiMnGa

magnetic shape memory alloy

I. Karaman, B. Basaran, H. E. Karaca, A. I. Karsilayan, and Y. I. Chumlyakov

Citation: Applied Physics Letters 90, 172505 (2007); doi: 10.1063/1.2721143

View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.2721143
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 APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS 90, 172505 2007

Energy harvesting using martensite variant reorientation mechanism

in a NiMnGa magnetic shape memory alloy
I. Karaman,a B. Basaran, and H. E. Karaca
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843
A. I. Karsilayan
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843
Y. I. Chumlyakov
Siberian Physical-Technical Institute, Tomsk 634050, Russia
Received 6 February 2007; accepted 9 March 2007; published online 24 April 2007
Magnetic shape memory alloys demonstrate significant potential for harvesting waste mechanical
energy utilizing the Villari effect. In this study, a few milliwatts of power output are achieved taking
advantage of martensite variant reorientation mechanism in Ni51.1Mn24Ga24.9 single crystals under
slowly fluctuating loads 10 Hz without optimization in the power conversion unit. Effects of
applied strain range, bias magnetic field, and loading frequency on the voltage output are revealed.
Anticipated power outputs under moderate frequencies are predicted showing that the power outputs
higher than 1 W are feasible. 2007 American Institute of Physics. DOI: 10.1063/1.2721143
Magnetic shape memory alloys MSMAs have the ca- ler. The long axes of the specimens are along the 100 ori-
pability to convert mechanical, thermal, and magnetic stimuli entation of the high temperature L21 austenite phase while
into each other for potential applications in actuation, sens- the other two perpendicular orientations are 011 and 011.
ing, and power generation.13 Magnetic field induced strain Compressive load is applied along the long axis and bias
via reorientation of martensite variants has been studied ex- field is applied perpendicular to the compression axis. A Hall
tensively since 1996.1 This mechanism can result in revers- sensor is used to measure the bias field. Note that in a prac-
ible strain levels as high as 10%,4 which are about two orders tical application, instead of an electromagnet, a permanent
of magnitude higher than those of Terfenol-D, Galfenol, and magnet would be used to provide the bias field, as in the case
piezoelectrics.5 MSMAs are metallic materials, thus, they of magnetostrictive energy harvesters.
can be reshaped easier than brittle piezoelectrics. They also The single crystal specimen was cooled down to 90 C
cost less compared to piezoelectrics and Terfenol-D. Some under 6 MPa to obtain a single variant tetragonal
MSMAs can be used under tension with large strain outputs.6 martensite11 with its short axis along the stress direction
Recently discovered Galfenol has also good tensile strength variant 1 shown by 1 in Fig. 2. The room temperature
but its high permeability results in eddy current generation phase is a cubic L21 phase 0 in Fig. 2. Upon application of
even at low frequencies which limits its utility in energy a bias field of 1.6 T, the field induced variant reorientation
harvesting applications.5 formed another martensite variant variant 2, the long axis
MSMAs have mainly been investigated for conversion of which is parallel to the compression direction, 2. While
of magnetic stimuli into mechanical response. However, the the field was being kept constant, the sample was loaded up
effect of external mechanical stimuli on the magnetic behav- to 20 MPa during which variant 2 reoriented into variant 1,
ior of MSMAs has received limited attention.710 Strain in- 4 in Fig. 2. In the course of unloading, variant 1 reoriented
duced changes in the flux density have been determined in back to variant 2 due to the bias field, 3 in Fig. 2. The
NiMnGa single crystals under constant bias magnetic field.7,8 corresponding stress versus strain magnetoelastic response
Suorsa et al.9 reported magnetization measurements at vari- is portrayed in Fig. 2 with the schematics representing the
ous discrete levels ranging from 0% to 6% for strain and
from 5 to 120 kA/ m for magnetic field. Sarawate and
Dapino10 determined the bias field for maximum recoverable
flux density change in a commercial NiMnGa. The investi-
gations on the potential of these materials in energy harvest-
ing are, however, still lacking. Moreover, there has been no
report on the voltage or power output due to cyclic marten-
site variant reorientation which has the potential to convert
free vibrations to electrical power.
In order to fill this gap, a set of power harvesting experi-
ments was conducted on 4 4 16 mm3 Ni51.1Mn24Ga24.9
single crystal compression specimens. The experimental
setup used Fig. 1 consists of a uniaxial loading stage, an
electromagnet for bias field application, a copper pickup coil
with 1000 turns, an oscilloscope, and a temperature control-
FIG. 1. Color online Schematics of the experimental setup and pickup
a
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; electronic mail: coil. c, diameter of the wire in the pickup coil; D, diameter of the MSMA
ikaraman@tamu.edu specimen; lc, length of the pickup coil; T, thickness of the coil.

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0003-6951/2007/9017/172505/3/$23.00 90, 172505-1 2007 American Institute of Physics
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 172505-2 Karaman et al.
FIG. 2. Color online Compressive stressstrainbias magnetic field re-
sponse of the 100 oriented Ni51.1Mn24Ga24.9 single crystals at 90 C. A,
austenite cubic L21 phase; V1 and V2, martensite variants; a0, lattice pa-
rameter of austenite; a and c, lattice parameters of martensite.
ongoing magneto-microstructural evolution. The detailed
magnetoelastic response of these single crystals can be found
elsewhere.11
In MSMAs, reorientation from one variant to another
under a bias field yields a change in magnetization since the
easy magnetization direction of the variants is along their
short axes. The magnitude of this change depends on the
difference in magnetization of the hard and easy axes of
martensite under the given bias field. Such change in mag-
netization and magnetic flux leads to voltage generation
which can be detected using an oscilloscope.
Utilizing this fact, several experiments were conducted
by systematically changing the bias field, applied strain
range i.e., the amount of reoriented material volume, and
loading frequency in the region where both martensite vari-
ants existed in the microstructure 3 in Fig. 2. Figure 3
shows the peak induced voltage output as a function of the
bias field for a strain range of 1.25% under the loading fre-
quencies of 1 and 5 Hz. As frequency increases, induced
voltage output increases. Similarly, increasing bias field in-
FIG. 3. Color online Peak induced voltage output as a function of bias
magnetic field under the loading frequencies of 1 and 5 Hz at a constant
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applied strain range of 1.25%.
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Appl. Phys. Lett. 90, 172505 2007
FIG. 4. Color online Experimental a and computed b peak induced
voltage outputs as a function of strain range under the bias field of 1.6 T for
different excitation frequencies.
creases the voltage output up to 60 mV under 5 Hz but then
decreases with further increase. The reason for this nonlinear
behavior is the different critical magnetic fields of the easy
and hard axes to reach saturation magnetization M s. Ini-
tially, the difference between the magnetizations of these
axes increases with the increasing bias field where the mag-
netization along the easy axis as a function of magnetic field
has a higher slope. After M s is reached along the easy axis, a
further increase in the bias field results in a decrease in the
magnetization difference. From Fig. 3, the critical field to
reach M s along the easy axis is determined to be 1.2 T. This
is much higher than expected, since demagnetization has a
substantial effect on the real material behavior due to the
experimental setup. Kiefer and Lagoudas12 calculated the de-
magnetization factor as 0.65 for a sample with an aspect ratio
of 2:1:1 under the present experimental conditions. The de-
magnetization factor is expected to be slightly smaller for the
samples with the aspect ratio of 4:1:1. If a demagnetization
factor of 0.6 is used, the field inside the sample under the
external bias field of 1.2 T would be 0.65 T, showing that
the material itself requires much lower fields to saturate.
Figure 4a displays the experimental results for the peak
voltage output as a function of strain range and excitation
frequency under the bias field of 1.6 T. Strain ranges up to
4.9% were applied in the form of sinusoidal excitation with
frequencies ranging from 0.5 to 10 Hz. The observed in-
crease in voltage with strain is due to the increase in the
fraction of the material that undergoes variant reorientation,
resulting in higher total magnetization change. Also, as fre-
quency increases, the rate of change of magnetization in-
creases which, in turn, affects the output voltage. The maxi-
mum voltage of 280 mV is obtained with the strain range of
4.9% at 10 Hz frequency under 1.6 T. However, as seen in
Fig. 3, a higher voltage level would have been expected un-
der 1.2 T.
To predict the power outputs that could possibly be
achieved in the present alloy, the maximum reversible mag-
netic flux density change upon full martensite reorientation is
taken to be 0.2 T.10 Referring back to Fig. 1, if the volume of
the coil is fixed by appropriate choices of D, lc, and T, the
number of turns N in the coil can be approximated as
l cT
N , 1
c2
where lc is the length, T is the thickness and D is the inner
diameter of the coil, and c is the wire diameter. Resistance of
the coil can be calculated, assuming that the wire is made of
copper with the resistivity of 1 / 6 107 m, as
 172505-3 Karaman et al. Appl. Phys. Lett. 90, 172505 2007

R
ND
c/2 6 10
2
7 = 66.67 10
9 lcTD
c4
, 2

whereas the peak voltage induced in the coil can be found as

d dB
V=N = NA
dt dt

=
c2

l cT D

2
2
dB
dt
LcTD2 dB
= 0.785 2
c dt
in V. 3

Assuming a sinusoidal excitation, the change in the magnetic
induction can be modeled by
B = B0r sint,
where B0 is half of the reversible magnetic flux density
change upon martensite reorientation and r is the volume
fraction of the material undergoing reorientation which is
defined as / max. is the applied strain range and max is the
maximum reorientation strain for the present crystals which
is measured as 5%. Since B0 depends on applied strain
range,10 the term r is explicitly included in the formulation.
It is important to note that B0 is also a function of bias
magnetic field10 which can be deduced from Fig. 3. Bias
magnetic field dictates what the maximum B0 would be when
the variant reorientation is complete. Using Eqs. 3 and 4,
the rms voltage generated can be expressed as
lcTD2B0rf
Vrms = 3.488 in V,
c2
where f is the excitation frequency. If N is known for pickup
coils, then the peak induced voltage can be found using
D2
Vpeak = N2 fB0r , 5b
2
The rms power delivered to a matching electrical load im-
pedance can then be calculated as
Prms = 45.62 106lcTD3B20r2 f 2 in W.
Figure 4b shows the peak induced voltage output pre-
dicted using Eq. 5b and the current materials and pickup
coil parameters B0 = 0.1 T, N = 1000 turns, and D = 7 mm.
The predictions agree well with the experimental results,
confirming the validity of the above approach at least for the
low frequency range used. As a comparison, similar voltage
output levels were detected under 7 15 MPa in Terfenol-D
and Galfenol at a frequency of about 60 Hz using a 3000
turn pickup coil.5 In similar hardware and frequency condi-
tions, the present alloy could result in much larger voltage
outputs according to Eq. 5b. To reveal the potential of the
present NiMnGa alloy for power generation, Eqs. 5a and
6 were used to calculate the Vrms and Prms values as a
function of wire diameter and excitation frequency for the
experimental pickup coil parameters of D = 7 mm, T = 5 mm,
and lc = 12 mm. It is clear that at relatively low frequencies
around 200 Hz, it might be possible to achieve power out-
puts above 1 W. Although the power delivered to a matching
FIG. 5. Color online Predicted induced voltage a and power outputs b
in NiMnGa MSMA power harvesters, with fixed specimen and coil volume
as shown in Fig. 1, as a function of wire diameter and excitation frequency.
4
electrical load is independent of the wire diameter as seen in
Fig. 5, the inductance and the resistance of the coil primarily
depend on c. This provides flexibility during the optimization
of coil parameters and allows maximum power transfer to a
given electrical load impedance. However, we did not at-
tempt to enhance the coil parameters in this study. Similarly,
the above calculations do not consider optimized power con-
ditioning circuitry which, together with the enhanced conver-
sion unit, could make it possible to achieve power outputs as
high as 1 W below 100 Hz.
In summary, power harvesting experiments on NiMnGa
MSMA single crystals demonstrated that it is possible to
obtain a few milliwatt power output utilizing martensite re-
5a orientation mechanism under slowly fluctuating loads
10 Hz. This can be increased over 1 W at frequencies over
a hundred hertz by optimizing the power conversion hard-
ware which would make these materials comparable and pos-
sibly better energy harvesters than magnetostrictive and pi-
ezoelectric materials at low frequencies. There is an
optimum bias field where induced voltage and power output
maximize. Voltage generation increases linearly with excita-
tion frequency and strain range, and decreases linearly with
the square of wire diameter.
6
This work was supported by the U.S. Army Research
Office, Contract No. W911NF-06-1-0319, the U.S. Civilian
Research and Development Foundation, Grant No. RUE1-
2690-TO-05.
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