DESIGN OF A PIEZOELECTRIC ENERGY HARVESTER BY USING CYLINDER AS A BLUFF BODYAhmet Levent AVSAR and Melin SAHIN In recent days, clean energy alternatives are searched and application of these alternatives are studied. One alternative method is used to smart material, such as piezoelectric material, to harvest energy. Energy can be harvested from vibrating structures by piezoelectric material due to its nature. By suitable design, piezoelectric material can generate electricity under vibratory loading. This electricity can also be used to operate part of the system. Especially, energy can be used to charge the batteries; therefore, battery free application can be possible by piezoelectric energy harvesting. This type of energy harvesting can be used in air vehicles to operate either one small system or a sensor used in structural health monitoring system. In this study, a piezoelectric vortex energy harvester is designed in order to obtain energy from flow induced vibration. For this reason, a piezoelectric bimorph harvester, which is a commercial off the shelf product, is used. In order to generate vorticities to give excitation around the first resonance frequency of piezoelectric bimorph harvester, a cylinder is selected as a bluff body. During the design stage of the harvester, the effect of the size and the position of the bluff body are also investigated via wind tunnel tests. |