Three-Degree-of-Freedom Hybrid Piezoelectric-Inductive Aeroelastic Energy Harvester Exploiting a Control Surface

Abstract

Aeroelastic energy harvesting by transforming wind energy into low-power electricity via low-profile and geometrically scalable devices has received growing attention in the literature of energy harvesting for wireless electronic components. The goal is to harvest flow energy available in high-wind areas toward enabling self-powered systems, such as sensor networks employed in structural health and usage monitoring of aircraft and rotorcraft. Other than bluff-body-based energy harvester configurations using vortex-induced vibrations, the use of an aeroelastic typical section with a proper transduction mechanism is a popular and convenient approach to create instabilities and persistent oscillations for flow energy harvesting. In this work, a hybrid three-degree-of-freedom airfoil-based aeroelastic energy harvester that simultaneously uses piezoelectric transduction and electromagnetic induction is analyzed based on fully coupled electroaeroelastic modeling. This particular configuration exploits a control surface for enhanced design flexibility as compared to its well-explored two-degree-of-freedom counterparts. The two transduction mechanisms are added to the plunge degree of freedom in the presence of two separate electrical loads, and dimensionless electroaeroelastic equations are obtained. The effects of aeroelastic parameters and load resistance values on the overall electroaeroelastic behavior (total power generation and linear flutter speed) are discussed in detail.