Preliminary Testing of a New Vibration Energy Harvester (original) (raw)

Wind energy harvesting from wind-induced vibration

2017

Wind power is a clean energy source and alternative to the non-renewable type of energy sources. One of the challenges in utilizing wind energy is to efficiently harvest the wind energy into a usable electrical power, especially in the regions with low wind speed. This study aims to assess the possibility of harvesting wind energy by using the concept of flow induced vibration of a bluff body. A thin flat plate is introduced downstream of the cylinder as a simple but effective passive wind control. Three conditions have been tested to evaluate its effects on wind energy harvesting: isolated cylinder, flat plate with vibrating cylinder and cylinder with vibrating flat plate. The wind-body interaction is simulated using mesh motion technique available in OpenFOAM, an open source code for Computational Fluid Dynamics, while the harvested energy is calculated based on the work done by the single degree of freedom (SDOF) vibrating body. The study found that the vibrating cylinder with fl...

Conversion of wind-induced vibrations into electricity

2014 IEEE 36th International Telecommunications Energy Conference (INTELEC), 2014

The recently growing concern to reduce the energy from non-renewable sources encourages the development of new energy harvesting methods. In case of unattended remote telecom equipment, it should be advantageous to obtain energy from the wind while no rotation is applied. In this paper, a study is described on the feasibility of energy harvesting from the wind, not based on turbine but on piezoelectric transducers that convert the wind-induced vibrations of a cantilevered beam elements into electric energy. The main investigated element is the oscillating body placed at the free end of the beam. The prototype was developed in three different arrangements of the beam and the oscillating body. The essential variations were the length of the beam and the size of the oscillatory body. According to the results, a panel occupying one square meter and operating at 10% efficiency in 10 m/s wind might be able to generate 54 W of electric power. Contrary to the intuitive thought, a cantilever beam system completed with an oscillatory body, produces energy proportional to the amplitude of oscillation (directly dependant on the resonant frequency proximity) and not to the derivative of the oscillations. The produced oscillations and electric power depend on the speed of wind. The findings are useful for creating a reliable, efficient wind energy harvesting system, which could be mounted on bridges, buildings, poles and simply on the ground. It is even possible to mount beams of different sizes and constructions in order to be efficient for various wind speeds.

Development and Analysis of Vortex-Induced Vibrations Energy Harvester

This article investigates the influence of the design parameters on the performance of an aero-elastic micro energy harvester with the goal of maximizing its output power. This micro energy harvester transforms wind energy into electricity via the vortex-induced oscillations of a piezoelectric material bonded on a flexible belt. The effect of the cylindrical tube diameter and the flow inlet velocity on the Von Karman vortex shedding frequency is investigated. The temporal and spatial frequencies are adjusted to match that of the first resonant vibration mode of the belt to maximize the output power. The results show that when the Von Karman vortices frequency hits the belt frequency at resonance, a maximum power output is produced.

Microwatt Energy Harvesting by Exploiting Flow-Induced Vibration

2018

Article history: Received 14 April 2018 Received in revised form 14 May 2018 Accepted 20 May 2018 Available online 23 July 2018 The green technology approaches by harvesting energy from aerodynamic flowinduced vibrations using a flexible square cylinder is experimentally investigated. The practicability of flow-induced vibration system to supply a sufficient base excitation vibration in microwatt scale is evaluated through a series of wind tunnel tests with different velocities. Test are performed for high Reynolds number 3.9 x 10 ≤ Re 1.4 x 10 and damping ratio ζ = 0.0052. The experiment setup is able to replicate the pattern of vibration amplitude for isolated square cylinder with previous available study. Then, the experimental setup is used to study the effect of vibration cylinder in harvesting the fluid energy. A prototype of electromagnetic energy harvesting is invented and fabricated to test its performance in the wind tunnel test. Test results reveal that the harnessed powe...

An experimental investigation into a novel small-scale device for energy harvesting using vortex-induced vibration

International Journal of Low-Carbon Technologies, 2020

Renewable energies could be a good solution to the problems associated with fossil fuels. The storage of wind energy by means of small-scale devices rather than large-scale turbines is a topic that has gained lots of interest. In this study, a compact device is proposed to harvest wind energy and transform it into electrical energy, by means of oscillations of a magnet into a coil, using the concept of vortex-induced vibration (VIV) behind a barrier. For a more comprehensive investigation, this system is studied from two viewpoints of fluid mechanics (without magnet) and power generation (with the magnet). For this purpose, an oscillating plate hinging on one side and three barriers with different geometrical shapes including cylindrical, triangular and rectangular barriers are used. In addition to the effect of barrier geometry, the impacts of various barriers dimensions, the distance between the plate and the barriers as well as inclination angle of the plate with respect to the h...

Development of low-speed wind energy harvesting device

Energy Reports, 2022

Since the energy demand increases, the sources of fluid energy such as wind energy and marine energy have attracted widespread attention, especially vortex-induced vibrations (VIV) excited by wind energy. This paper proposes a wind energy harvesting device-based VIV concept. The proposed device converts the mechanical energy of the oscillator into electrical energy. Different design shapes, that motivates disturbance in airflow, were proposed and tested. The proposed designs were numerically and experimentally tested to gauge their performance and efficiency in generating power. The detailed design and analysis for VIV including computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation were carried out. The CFD simulations were concentrated on the elastic rod (mast), which represents the critical component of the proposed model. Wind tunnel was used to conduct the experimental work. Piezoelectric sensors were utilized to measure and monitor extracted power. The best location of the piezoelectric sensors on the mast was investigated and located. The results of the simulations are reported in this paper. For each simulated case, lift coefficient, velocity, pressure, and vorticity contours are presented. It was also concluded that adding complexity to the geometry of the cylindrical proposed design would increase the lift force, and therefore, increasing the power. Promising numerical and experimental results were obtained, and power generation was maximized.

An Experimental Study of Downstream Structures on the Flow-Induced Vibrations Energy Harvester Performances

World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, International Journal of Mechanical, Aerospace, Industrial, Mechatronic and Manufacturing Engineering, 2018

This paper presents an experimental investigation for the characteristics of an energy harvesting device exploiting flowinduced vibration in a wind tunnel. A stationary bluff body is connected with a downstream tip body via an aluminium cantilever beam. Various lengths of aluminium cantilever beam and different shapes of downstream tip body are considered. The results show that the characteristics of the energy harvester's vibration depend on both the length of the aluminium cantilever beam and the shape of the downstream tip body. The highest ratio between vibration amplitude and bluff body diameter was found to be 1.39 for an energy harvester with a symmetrical triangular tip body and L/D 1 = 5 at 9.8 m/s of flow speed (Re = 20077). Using this configuration, the electrical energy was extracted with a polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) piezoelectric beam with different load resistances, of which the optimal value could be found on each Reynolds number. The highest power output was found to be 3.19 µW, at 9.8 m/s of flow speed (Re = 20077) and 27 MΩ of load resistance.

Performance Analysis of Vortex Induced Vibration Based Wind Energy Harvesting System

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2019

The growth of energy harvesting devices based on fluid interactions is part of the global research for new tools to generate renewable energy. In this treatise, the possibility to harvest energy from a wind flow using vortex-induced vibrations (VIV) of cylinder is analyzed. This work aims to develop a compact device that is able to harvest wind energy and transform it into electrical energy using the concept of vortex shedding. The VIV wind harvesting device features a hollow PVC cylinder of 50 cm length and 12 cm diameter of mass 0.681 kg as the airfoil. A cylinder was chosen as the airfoil because of its ability to harness an equal amount of lift force in both the positive and negative directions along the vertical axis. There are two piezoelectric crystal attached at each end of the spring so that the vibration made by the cylinder stresses the piezoelectric ceramic plate. The output electrical power is then obtained from the piezoelectric plate.