Modeling and performance analysis of cambered wing-based piezoaeroelastic energy harvesters

Abstract

We investigate the effects of aerodynamic loads on the performance of wing-based piezoaeroelastic energy harvesters. The rigid airfoil consists of pitch and plunge degrees of freedom supported by flexural and torsional springs with a piezoelectric coupling attached to the plunge degree of freedom. The effects of aerodynamic loads are investigated by considering a camber in the airfoil. A two-dimensional unsteady vortex-lattice method (UVLM) is used to model the unsteady aerodynamic loads. An iterative scheme based on Hamming’s fourth-order predictor–corrector method is employed to solve the governing equations simultaneously and interactively. The effects of varying the camber, its location, and the nonlinear torsional spring coefficient are determined. The results show that, for small values of the camber location, the flutter speed changes greatly on increasing the camber of the airfoil. On the other hand, for large values of the camber location, the variation of the flutter speed when changing the camber is very negligible. We demonstrate that the symmetric airfoil case is the best configuration to design enhanced wing-based piezoaeroelastic energy harvesters. Furthermore, the results show that an increase in the camber results in a decrease in the level of the harvested power. For cambered airfoils, we demonstrate that an increase in the camber location leads to an increase in the level of the harvested power. The results show that an increase in the airfoil camber delays the appearance of a secondary Hopf bifurcation.

Enhanced mechanical energy extraction from transverse galloping using a dual mass system

“…According to this hypothesis, if there is no phase shift (or time lag) between the instantaneous fluid force coefficient C y (which is related to lift and drag as C y = -(C L + C D tan a)/ cos a) and the transverse body velocity, then the instantaneous fluid force acting on the moving body is nearly equal to the static force evaluated at the instantaneous angle of attack a. Quasi-steady hypothesis works well when the reduced velocity is large enough, as discussed in detail in [29,32]. The functional relation between C y and a is typically expressed as a polynomial [20] and in this study, the order of the polynomial chosen is three. Polynomial fitting has been truncated to third order because it represents a reasonable compromise between development complexity and global accuracy of the predictions [30, p. 119].…”

“…Modeling and experimental results are given by Bryant and Garcia [17], where piezoelectric conversion was employed. Theoretical extensions can be found in Abdelkefi et al [18] or Bae et al [19], where structural and aerodynamic nonlinearities are considered in the piezoaeroelastic system, and in Abdelkefi et al [20] where a cambered wing-based is considered. Finally, the energy-harvesting eel proposed by Allen and Smits should be mentioned, where a piezoelectric membrane is placed in the wake of a bluff body [21,22].…”

A Novel Piezoelectric Energy Harvester Using the Macro Fiber Composite Cantilever with a Bicylinder in Water

“…Akaydin et al [20,21] studied a thin polyvinylidene difluoride cantilever beam, and the maximum output power was obtained when the natural frequency of the energy harvester was equal to the vortex shedding frequency. Under the airflow flutter excitation, the airfoil-based piezoelectric energy harvesters were mathematically and experimentally investigated, and it was pointed out that the airfoil-based energy harvester should be an effective way of converting wind energy into electricity [22][23][24][25][26][27]. Furthermore, with different cross-section geometries (including square, D-shaped, and triangular sections), some galloping-based piezoelectric energy harvesters were presented to increase the output power [28][29][30][31][32][33][34].…”

Maximum Power of Thermally and Electrically Coupled Thermoelectric Generators

“…Energy harvesters use piezoelectric, smart and semiconductors materials. In fact, there exist both vibratory-based energy harvesters (moving parts) and thermoelectric energy harvesters (no moving parts) [2][3][4][5][6][7].…”