Piezoelectric energy harvesting from vertical piezoelectric beams in the horizontal fluid flows

Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting (PEH) of fluid-flow energy has attracted significant attention throughout the last decade. In the previous PEH from fluid flow, a piezoelectric beam was placed behind a bluff body, such as circular cylinders. Hence, the piezoelectric beam oscillated due to the vortex shedding behind of the bluff body. Subsequently, this vibration generated voltage in the beam. In many engineering vehicles such as airplanes, the strong vortex shedding caused by bluff body was destructive and reduced the efficiency of devices; therefore; it was not proper to attach a bluff body to these devices. In this paper, PEH from vertical beams in low speeds and high-speed flows is investigated. The current work shows that in contrast to low-speed flows, the extracted power from vertical beam in high-speed flows is considerable. Moreover, as a practical example of vertical beam in high-speed flows, the energy harvesting from piezoelectric Gurney flap attached to an NACA2412 airfoil is investigated. Finally, this study proposes a piezoelectric vertical beam with attached end cylinder as an energy harvester in the low-speed flows. It is indicated that this device has strong vibration and, therefore, produces a remarkable electrical power. (C) 2017 Sharif University of Technology. All rights reserved.