Design and performance evaluation of an aeroelastic energy harvester based on the limit cycle oscillation phenomenon

In present era, the demand of low power electronic instruments has been increasing and their energy consumption is decreasing. The possibility to extract energy from an operational environment is of great interest in the actual advanced industrial applications and this is particularly true in the aerospace eld where energy saving is an absolute task. Energy harvesting by uid-structure interaction represents a signicant research eld for developing innovative solutions for power supply, a topic of well-known importance. A typical condition for energy harvesting, which require a strong interaction between the external energy and the components where the harvester is embedded, is the Limit Cycle phenomenon arising after the utter speed in nonlinear aeroelastic systems. In the present work, the possibility to extract energy by means of piezoelectric transduction from a post-critical aeroelastic behavior, as the Limit Cycle, is investigated. In particular, the importance of aerodynamic model for determining the performance of the harvester is stressed. A suitable designed aeroelastic harvester based on the use of two dierent types of piezoelectric materials is presented which is suitable for energy harvesting and can be utilized to drive nano and microelectronics i.e., wireless sensors.