The investigation on structural health monitoring of aerospace structures via piezoelectric aeroelastic energy harvesting

From the past few decades, the aerospace industry is using composite materials having low weight to strength ratio, and the aerospace vehicles are subjected to adverse and harsh conditions, during the operational time. Furthermore, they require a continuous power supply to operate the wireless sensors. So, in the aerospace industry, energy harvesting and structural health monitoring (SHM) are the critical tasks. Piezoelectric (PZT) materials can play a vital role in the field of energy harvesting and structural health monitoring of the structures at the same time, which makes them more convenient to use in aerospace applications. In this research paper, the fluid-structure interaction (FSI) based system is analyzed, the PZT harvester is subjected to the axial airflow for energy harvesting. The campaign is carried out to predict the energy harvesting capability of the aeroelastic harvester via PZT transduction. The parameters influencing the energy harvesting mechanism i.e., airflow and external resistance are analyzed. The numerical bifurcation diagram is also constructed to understand the plunge amplitude of the harvester at the different values of airflow. Moreover, the SHM of the host structure (aeroelastic harvester) is also analyzed via the admittance method at the same time. The results showed that the magnitude of energy harvesting and quality of SHM for the harvester attached with the rectangular PZT patch is better than with the circular PZT patch.