TY - JOUR
T1 - Parametric analysis of fluidic energy harvesters in grid turbulence
AU - Danesh-Yazdi, Amir H.
AU - Elvin, Niell
AU - Andreopoulos, Yiannis
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© SAGE Publications.
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - Even though it is omnipresent in nature, there has not been much research in the literature involving turbulence as an energy source for piezoelectric fluidic harvesters. In the present work, a grid-generated turbulence forcing function model which we derived previously is employed in the single degree-of-freedom electromechanical equations to find the power output and tip displacement of piezoelectric cantilever beams. Additionally, we utilize simplified, deterministic models of the turbulence forcing function to obtain closed-form expressions for the power output. These theoretical models are studied using experiments that involve separately placing a hot-wire anemometer probe and a short PVDF beam in flows where turbulence is generated by means of passive and semi-passive grids. From a parametric study of the deterministic models, we show that a white noise forcing function best mimics the experimental data. Furthermore, our parametric study of the response spectrum of a generic fluidic harvester in grid-generated turbulent flow shows that optimum power output is attained for beams placed closer to the grid with a low natural frequency and damping ratio and a large electromechanical coupling coefficient.
AB - Even though it is omnipresent in nature, there has not been much research in the literature involving turbulence as an energy source for piezoelectric fluidic harvesters. In the present work, a grid-generated turbulence forcing function model which we derived previously is employed in the single degree-of-freedom electromechanical equations to find the power output and tip displacement of piezoelectric cantilever beams. Additionally, we utilize simplified, deterministic models of the turbulence forcing function to obtain closed-form expressions for the power output. These theoretical models are studied using experiments that involve separately placing a hot-wire anemometer probe and a short PVDF beam in flows where turbulence is generated by means of passive and semi-passive grids. From a parametric study of the deterministic models, we show that a white noise forcing function best mimics the experimental data. Furthermore, our parametric study of the response spectrum of a generic fluidic harvester in grid-generated turbulent flow shows that optimum power output is attained for beams placed closer to the grid with a low natural frequency and damping ratio and a large electromechanical coupling coefficient.
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U2 - 10.1177/1045389X16641207
DO - 10.1177/1045389X16641207
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85002235293
SN - 1045-389X
VL - 27
SP - 2757
EP - 2773
JO - Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures
JF - Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures
IS - 20
ER -