Artificial piezoelectric grass for energy harvesting from turbulence-induced vibration

Abstract

The primary objective of this research is to develop a deploy-and-forget energy harvesting device for use in low-velocity, highly turbulent fluid flow environments i.e. streams or ventilation systems. The work presented here focuses on a novel, lightweight, highly robust, energy harvester design referred to as piezoelectric grass. This biologically inspired design consists of an array of cantilevers, each constructed with piezoelectric material. When exposed to proper turbulent flow conditions, these cantilevers experience vigorous vibrations. Preliminary results have shown that a small array of piezoelectric grass was able to produce up to 1.0 mW per cantilever in high-intensity turbulent flow having a mean velocity of 11.5 m s −1. According to the literature, this is among the highest output achieved using similar harvesting methods. A distributed parameter model for energy harvesting from turbulence-induced vibration will be introduced and experimentally validated. This model is generalized for the case of a single cantilever in turbulent cross-flow. Two high-sensitivity pressure probes were needed to perform spectral measurements within various turbulent flows. The design and performance of these probes along with calibration and measurement techniques will be discussed.

A Review on Mechanisms for Piezoelectric-Based Energy Harvesters

“…It can generate 1 mW for a wind speed of 11 ms −1 for PZT and 1 µW for a wind speed of 7 ms −1 . [185,186] Three piezoelectric patches are attached to harvest energy from the wing of an aircraft. It can generate 10.1-24 µW of power at a wind speed of 11-25 kmh −1 .…”

Comparison Among Different Rainfall Energy Harvesting Structures

“…The vibration energy can be regarded as marginal energy due to its small entity, but it can be suitably adopted for utilities of reduced energy capacity, such as the transmission of information, as in the case of automotive tires [4]. Other studies have traced ways to recover energy from renewable sources [5,6].…”

A Nonlinear Suspended Energy Harvester for a Tire Pressure Monitoring System

“…Kinetic energy harvesting is often conducted using electromagnetic [5][6][7] and piezoelectric harvesting devices [8][9][10][11][12][13], and micro-scale energy harvesters composed of different materials have been presented by researchers [14,15]. The number of studies on harvesting energy from the environment for TPMSs has increased in recent years.…”