Numerical Research of Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting from WIV

Abstract

The WIV numerical simulations of an elastically mounted cylinder located downstream of a stationary larger cylinder at high Reynolds numbers is done by lattice Boltzmann method(LBM). The model of fluid-mechanical-electric is established by LBM and OpenModelica through the coupling of WIV equation and Gauss equation. The numerical analysis of the WIV piezoelectric energy harvesting obtain the output voltage and output power under R=2e5Ω, which is compared to the numerical simulation of a single cylinder VIV piezoelectric energy harvesting. The results show that the WIV increases the amplitude of downstream cylinder and gets higher output voltage and power. For the same energy harvesting device, WIV has better electricity-generating capacity and can effectively improve the piezoelectric output characteristics.