High-performance piezoelectric wind energy harvester with Y-shaped attachments

In order to improve wind energy harvesting performance, this paper proposes a novel high-performance piezoelectric wind energy harvester with Y-shaped attachments on the bluff body (GPEH-Y). When Y-shaped attachments are removed from the bluff body, the vortex-induced vibration piezoelectric energy harvester (VIVPEH) will be obtained. The Lattice-Boltzmann CFD method (LBM) used to analyze the vibration amplitude and frequency, confirms the transition from vortex induced vibration to galloping. The transition from vortex induced vibrations into galloping by adding Y-shaped attachments to the bluff body is further verified by experiments. A theoretical model of the GPEH-Y is presented to analyze its energy harvesting performance. A set of the wind tunnel tests is conducted to validate the presented GPEH-Y. The performance of piezoelectric wind energy harvesters with or without Y-shaped attachments is specifically compared, taking into the fact that the proposed design allows a simple conversion from the VIVPEH to the GPEH layout.