Xiaotong Gao, Wei-Heng Shih and Wan Y. Shih’s latest paper, titled “Flow Energy Harvesting Using Piezoelectric Cantilevers with Cylindrical Extension,” has been published online in IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics.
From the abstract: “We present a new piezoelectric flow energy harvester (PFEH) based on a piezoelectric cantilever with a cylindrical extension. The flow induced vibration of the cylindrical extension causes the piezoelectric cantilever to vibrate at the natural frequency of the PFEH. The PFEH provides a low-cost, compact and scalable power source for small electronics by harvesting energy from ambient flows such as wind and water streams. Prototypes were tested in both laminar and turbulent air flows demonstrating the feasibility of the design. Turbulence excitation was found to be the dominant driving mechanism of the PFEH with additional vortex shedding excitation contribution in the lock-in region.”
The paper can be viewed directly here. [View PDF]
