Optimised Vibration Energy Harvesting for Aerospace Applications

Abstract

Accurate knowledge regarding the ongoing condition of an aircraft’s structural condition together with future life predictions enable optimal use of material, hence reducing mass, cost and environmental effects. Previous work by the authors has demonstrated the potential for using energy harvested from vibrating aircraft panels to power a self contained health monitoring system based on the use of wireless sensor nodes for an aircraft structure. However the system proposed was far from optimal. Research is being undertaken to investigate the various factors affecting the power output of such a system, including the design of the harvesters used (length, width, number of layers), their positioning and their orientation. The work presented in this paper enables the determination of the optimised positions for a series of harvesters on a representative aircraft panel, based on the use of shape functions for the various modes of vibration over the expected frequency range, to derive a function related to power output which is then optimised. A series of recommendations are made.