Concepção de um aerogerador de forma numérica e experimental utilizando transdutores piezoelétricos baseados no conceito de energy harvesting

Abstract

Since the beginning of the history of civilization, increasingly efficient ways of obtaining energy have been sought, and thanks to the advent of electronics, conventional means of energy conversion have been replaced by new renewable and clean forms. One of them, is the application of intelligent energy harvesting materials, specifically piezoelectric materials. Therefore, this work aims to design, characterize and analyze an aerogenerator composed of piezoelectric transducers based on the concept of energy harvesting numerically and experimentally, using the Finite Element Method (FEM) theory applied to ANSYS®. The suggested prototype consists of three 120° spaced cantilever beams, with piezoelectric elements glued to their surfaces, having approximate dimensions of 84.5 x 87 x 20 mm³, and excited by permanent neodymium magnets glued to their free end. After the simulations, the best performing configuration was the trapezoidal beam Model 11, with a 5 mm long piezoelectric bonded to both surfaces using piezo C-64 and a magnet-shaped mass (16 x 10 x 4 mm³) glued the free end of the beam with 4.80 g. Having a maximum power for a single piezoelectric of 0.08 mW in open circuit and 5.6 mW in closed circuit with a load of 1 MΩ. Using this configuration to perform the experiments without the rectifying bridge, a maximum power of 2.06 mW for Piezo 12 and 3.78 mW for all piezos in parallel (APP) was obtained at a frequency of 13.76 Hz and 13.71 Hz, respectively. Taking only the volume of the beams into account, the power densities for these two cases were 18.8 mW/mm³ and 11.5 mW/mm³. For the suggested application, there was an increase in system autonomy of 1h44min05s for the Ideal case and 06min04s for the Real case.