Modeling and Analysis of Upright Piezoelectric Energy Harvester under Aerodynamic Vortex-induced Vibration

Abstract

This paper presents an upright piezoelectric energy harvester (UPEH) with cylinder extension along its longitudinal direction. The UPEH can generate energy from low-speed wind by bending deformation produced by vortex-induced vibrations (VIVs). The UPEH has the advantages of less working space and ease of setting up an array over conventional vortex-induced vibration harvesters. The nonlinear distributed modeling method is established based on Euler–Bernoulli beam theory and aerodynamic vortex-induced force of the cylinder is obtained by the van der Pol wake oscillator theory. The fluid–solid–electricity governing coupled equations are derived using Lagrange’s equation and solved through Galerkin discretization. The effect of cylinder gravity on the dynamic characteristics of the UPEH is also considered using the energy method. The influences of substrate dimension, piezoelectric dimension, the mass of cylinder extension, and electrical load resistance on the output performance of harvester are studied using the theoretical model. Experiments were carried out and the results were in good agreement with the numerical results. The results showed that a UPEH configuration achieves the maximum power of 635.04 μW at optimum resistance of 250 kΩ when tested at a wind speed of 4.20 m/s. The theoretical results show that the UPEH can get better energy harvesting output performance with a lighter tip mass of cylinder, and thicker and shorter substrate in its synchronization working region. This work will provide the theoretical guidance for studying the array of multiple upright energy harvesters.