<p>Galloping flow energy harvesters are designed to operate in environments where fluctuations in wind speed are a common occurrence. To effectively harness energy in such environments, the harvester must be sensitive to variations in the flow speed; i.e. it must have a very short rise time to its steady-state amplitude. It has been shown that, the addition of Y-shaped tail fins to a square prism reduces its rise time without adversely influencing the magnitude of the steady-state output power of the harvester. In this work, we use the open-source computational fluid dynamics toolbox Open-FOAM to delineate the influence of adding the Y-shaped tail fin on the flow around the galloping prism, and to find the optimal fork angle which leads to the shortest rise time to the steady-state value. To this end, a transient2D computational analysis is performed by applying the SSTK−ω turbulence modeling for a Reynolds number of around 23000. The model is used to estimate the pressure field, velocity contours, and vorticity distributions around the galloping prism, which are then used to predict the forces actingon the prism and the rise time of the harvester. It is shown that the prism incorporating a Y-shaped fin with a fork angle of 15◦results in the shortest rise time and the maximum output power.</p>

Improving the Performance of Galloping Energy Harvesters via the Addition of Forked Tail Fins: A Computational Study

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/SMASIS/SMASIS2021/volume/85499

ASME 2021 Smart Materials, Adaptive Structures and Intelligent Systems (SMASIS2021)

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