Energy Harvesting Performance of Plate Wing from Discrete Gust Excitation

Abstract

Energy harvesting from aeroelastic response tends to have a wide application prospect, especially for small-scale unmanned aerial vehicles. Gusts encountered in flight can be treated as a potential source for sustainable energy supply. The plate model is more likely to describe a low aspect ratio, thin plate wing structure. In this paper, the Von Kármán plate theory and 3D doublet lattice method, coupled with a piezoelectric equation, are used to build a linear state-space equation. Under the load of “one-minus-cosine” discrete gust, the effects of flow speed and gust amplitude, thickness of piezoelectric ceramic transducer (PZTs) layers, and mounted load resistance are investigated. Results reveal that the PZTs layers on the wing root of the leading edge can obtain the highest electrical parameters. The flow velocity, thickness of the PZTs layers and load resistance are used to optimize energy harvesting data.