Improving the performance of aeroelastic energy harvesters by an interference cylinder

Abstract

An interference circular cylinder is introduced and placed downstream of the original circular cylinder for improving the output performance of energy harvesting from vortex-induced vibrations. The interference cylinder is fixed, but its spacing distance from the original cylinder can be adjusted. The experimental results show that the harvested power can be greatly enhanced and the bandwidth of the resonance region is also increased depending on the spacing distance and wind speed, compared to the original energy harvester without an interference cylinder. This is attributed to the fact that the flow pattern for the two cylinders changes with varying the spacing distance, resulting in distinctive characteristics of the Strouhal number and coefficients of fluctuating lift force and mean drag force. The present study gives a suggestive guidance in effectively harvesting energy from vortex-induced vibrations by adjusting the spacing distance according to the available wind speed.

An impact-based broadband aeroelastic energy harvester for concurrent wind and base vibration energy harvesting

“…When a properly supported structure is subjected to wind flows, aeroelastic instabilities will give rise to large amplitude limit cycle oscillations, and the vibration energy can be further converted into electricity via specific electromechanical transduction mechanisms such as piezoelectric effect. Researchers have employed various aeroelastic instabilities to harness the kinetic energy in wind flows, including vortex-induced vibration (VIV) (Akaydin et al, 2012;Goushcha et al, 2014;Dai et al, 2016;Zhang et al, 2017aZhang et al, , 2017b, galloping (Sirohi and Mahadik, 2012;Ewere et al, 2014;Zhao et al, 2013Zhao et al, , 2014Vicente-Ludlam et al, 2015;Dai et al, 2015;, aeroelastic flutter (Bryant and Garcia, 2011;Aquino et al, 2017;Orrego et al, 2017;Wu et al, 2017), etc. Using a VIV-based energy harvester with a piezoelectric cantilevered cylinder, Akaydin et al (2012) obtained a peak power of around 0.1mW at a wind speed of 1.192m/s.…”

Experimental Investigation on a Novel Airfoil-Based Piezoelectric Energy Harvester for Aeroelastic Vibration

“…Flow-induced vibration exists everywhere in nature and reserves tremendous energy, including vortex-induced vibration [18][19][20], wake-induced vibration [21,22], flutter-induced vibration [23][24][25], and galloping-induced vibration [26][27][28]. Energy harvesting from flutter-induced vibration has been extensively investigated in recent decades [29][30][31][32].…”

Impacts of stopper type and material on the broadband characteristics and performance of energy harvesters

“…Converting ambient vibrational energy into useful electric power through energy harvesters has been increasingly attracted worldwide attention due to its potential application in realizing self-powered operation of wearable electronics [1][2][3] or replacing traditional batteries which are difficult and expensive to maintain. 4,5 Three transduction mechanisms like electrostatic, [6][7][8] electromagnetic [9][10][11][12][13] and piezoelectric [14][15][16][17][18][19][20] have been widely utilized for energy harvesting from mechanical vibrations.…”