A bi-directional flow-energy harvester

Abstract

Due to a rapid decrease in fossil fuel resources and ever-growing carbon emissions, clean energy is urgently needed as a vital solution. In the past two decades, harvesting clean energy from ambient environment has attracted much attention. Flow induced vibration and energy harvesting performance of a cylinder with fins attached were investigated. Four configurations were studied: a plain cylinder, a cylinder with two windward fins, a cylinder with two leeward fins, and a cylinder with four fins. These four cylinders were tested in a water channel with a reduced velocity ranging between 2 and 25 and a Reynolds number ranging between 1500 and 11 400. It was found that the two-windward-fin cylinder underwent galloping, exhibiting much larger vibration amplitudes and a much broader operational velocity range, whereas the two-leeward-fin cylinder only underwent weak vortex-induced vibrations. By attaching both two windward and two leeward fins to the cylinder, a bi-directional flow-energy harvester was implemented, which outperformed the plain cylinder with much larger vibration amplitudes and a much broader velocity range. More importantly, due to the geometric symmetry, it is able to harvest flow energy from two opposite directions. A tuned-mass-damper system was then attached to the four-fin cylinder for the purpose of demonstration. Within the current flow speed range, the maximal voltage and power outputs are about 7.37 V and 1.81 μW, respectively, about 2.7 and 7.2 times the plain cylinder's peak values. The effects of flow incident angle and fin length were also studied. Numerical simulations were also conducted to provide a detailed information of flow and pressure to uncover the underlying physics. This bi-directional flow-energy harvester is a suitable candidate to operate at sites where the flow periodically switches its directions, such as in tidal flows.