Performance and experimental investigation for a novel heat storage based thermoelectric harvester for hypersonic vehicles

Abstract

Health monitoring systems for hypersonic vehicles, based on plenty of sensor nodes, are of great importance to improve safety and reliability, and are limited by power supply because of extra wire mass or cost of batteries changing. Energy harvester is one of the potential solutions. In this study, a novel energy harvesting device including thermoelectric generators, heat storage units, and electrical storage units is proposed. The thermal equivalent circuit model is developed, and the accuracy of that is verified by principle experimental. The effects of device parameters on the performance are investigated and optimized. The supply capacity of the device during actual flight is evaluated. The results show that the electrical storage unit can improve the lifetime by 33% of the device even with a lower output power. Optimal values exist for the volume fraction of PCMs in the HSU which is influenced by the dimension and power consumption. The ideal PCMs are those with low melting point and large latent heat of melting. The optimized device can provide more than 2.5 W of power output repetitively without maintenance, which matches the power level of wireless sensors, and offers a unique powering solution for health monitoring systems.