Energy harvesting behaviour for aircraft composites structures using macro-fibre composite: Part I – Integration and experiment

Abstract

General rightsThis document is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the reference above. Abstract: This paper investigates new ways to integrate piezoelectric energy harvesting elements onto carbon-fibre composite structures, using a new bonding technique with a vacuum bag system and co-curing process, for fabrication onto airframe structures. Dynamic mechanical vibration tests were performed to characterise the energy harvested by the various integration methods across a range of different vibration frequencies and applied mechanical input loadings. An analytical model was also introduced to predict the power harvested under the mechanical vibrations as a benchmark to evaluate the proposed methods. The developed co-curing showed a high efficiency for energy harvesting at a range of low frequencies, where the co-curing method offered a maximum improvement of 14.3% compared to the mechanical bonding approach at a frequency of 10Hz. Furthermore, co-curing exhibited potential at high frequency by performing the sweep test between frequencies of 1-100 Hz. Therefore, this research work offers potential integration technology for energy harvesting in complicated airframe structures in aerospace applications, to obtain the power required for environmental or structural health monitoring.

Energy Harvesting Research: The Road from Single Source to Multisource

“…Harvesting vibrational energy dissipated from these structures could solve these issues. To date, many energy harvesting powered structural monitoring systems have been reported, including those for asphalt pavement, oil pump, vehicle suspension, bridge, vehicle tire, railway and train, and aircraft and spacecraft . There are also plenty of comprehensive reviews discussing the topic of vibrational energy harvesting …”

Multimodal Shear Wave Deicing Using Fibre Piezoelectric Actuator on Composite for Aircraft Wings

“…MFC is lightweight, low power and can be integrated with existing aerospace composite material. This builds onto and extends beyond the previous work by one of the authors in the areas of integration of MFC into aircraft composite [24], as well as the investigation of delamination behaviour of composite materials [25], [26]. Finite element model was explored to study the mechanical vibration modes to find the maximum shear stress generated as references of experimental input.…”

“…Furthermore, possible testing on scaled prototype wing model in wind tunnel will also help to validate the concept in representative conditions. Based on previous integration experience for another application [24], MFC will also be integrated into the top layer of the the composite during prepreg stage in order to validate the performance of a fully integrated composite stack. Future work will also investigate the possibility to integrate with MEMS frequency controllers [38], macro-scale [39] and MEMS [40], [41] piezoelectric vibration energy harvesting, FPGA, microcontrollers and thin film power electronics, in order to realise a low power, light weight and thin profile smart shear wave de-icing system that can be integrated into the CFRP composite stack.…”

“…In general, piezoelectric actuators only require low power consumption to induce vibrations. Moreover, the piezoelectric actuator can be easily integrated within the surface skin to avoid any impact on structural design [17]. The principle of using piezoelectric actuator to remove the ice formed is to deliver shear stress wave excitations.…”

Multiphysics vibration FE model of piezoelectric macro fibre composite on carbon fibre composite structures

“…In relation to the integration with composite materials, piezoelectric films are particularly suitable due to the thin profile and manufacturing compatibility [28,29]. A previous study [30] has shown experimental integration and characterisation of piezoelectric macro-fibre composite (MFC) transducers with CFRP targeted for aircrafts, especially in order to be compatible with the flexible design of aircraft wings.…”