Broadening band of wind speed for aeroelastic energy scavenging of a cylinder through buffeting in the wakes of a squared prism

Abstract

Small-scale energy harvesting from ambient vibration induced by aerodynamic instabilities can be used for wireless sensing applications. The configuration with a bluff body attached to a piezoelectric cantilever has been exploited in many studies. For low-wind energy harvesting, vortex-induced vibration is investigated more frequently than other types of flow-induced motions, such as galloping and flutter, because of its quasisteady behavior called the potential lock-in phenomenon. In practice, a stationary square column is placed before the energy harvester to generate wake shedding, which can broaden the bandwidth of the energy harvester compared with a pure energy harvester equipped with a single bluff body. This paper presents a proposed CFD method coupled with an electromechanical model to predict the performance of the energy harvester. The proposed approach is verified with our experimental setup. The time history of the voltage output and the frequency response is obtained by performing the relevant experiments. A subsequent CFD study is performed to investigate the flow patterns of the present energy harvesting system.