NUMERICAL SIMULATION FOR ENERGY HARVESTING OF PIEZOELECTRIC FLAG IN UNIFORM FLOW

Piezoelectric energy harvesters (PEHs) have been investigated for decade years for powering low energy consumed electric devices. However, research of PEH more focuses on the structure and energy capture performance, ignoring the interaction between the PEHs and environmental vibration. In order to investigate energy harvesting performance of PEHs in uniform flow, this study presented a two-dimensional (2D) simulation method. The fluid kinematics was simulated by the discrete lattice Boltzmann equation. Fluid effecting on the piezoelectric flag were handled by immersed boundary method (IBM). Coupled with Euler-Bernoulli beam and piezoelectric theory, the full-coupled fluidstructure-electric (FSE) was established by using the immersed boundary-lattice Boltzmann method. Results indicate that due to the simple boundary treatment and time saving calculation of the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) and IBM, the numerical method is superior efficiency for the FSE problems. The identified peak energy conversion efficiencies for various velocities are significant to explore the optimum structure of piezoelectric flags in various fluid situations.