Vibration Analysis of Rotating Wind Turbine Blades Based on Piezoelectric Materials

Abstract

Piezoelectric materials have a piezoelectric effect that converts mechanical energy into electrical energy. In this paper, the blades of the rotating wind turbine are simplified as flexible beams fixed on the rotating wheels, and piezoelectric ceramics are added to the beams as sensors and actuators respectively to establish an analysis model of the vibration behavior of the piezoelectric sandwich rotating wind turbine blades. Based on Newton's second law, different accelerations are added to the rotating wheel to obtain the differential equation of a vibration variable coefficient. The fourth order Runge-Kutta method is used to solve variable coefficient differential equations. The hypothetical modal method is applied to solve the displacement of the free end of the flexible beam. A numerical simulation is also carried out to analyse the magnitude and change trend of the voltage output by adding piezoelectric materials at different angular velocities. The results show that the greater the rotational angular velocity, the greater the displacement of the free end of the flexible beam, and the greater the voltage due to the piezoelectric effect of the piezoelectric material. When the rotation angular velocity reaches a stable value, the displacement of the free end and the generated voltage will also reach a stable value.

Piezoelectric energy harvesting from vortex-induced vibrations on a GFRP beam with embedded piezoelectric patch

“…The ambient energy exists in several forms such as fluid [3,4], solar [5,6], wind [7,8], wave [9,10] and vibration [11,12]. Among them, owing to its wide availability, wind energy is one of the most promising energy sources existing in the environment.…”

“…where ∅ 1 and ∅ 2 is the corresponding mode shape functions for the sections with and without the piezoelectric patch, respectively. Free vibration solutions of the Equation ( 6) and (7)…”