Bio-Inspired Wind Energy Harvester

Engineers and designers often mimic mechanisms found in nature to accomplish a specific task. This concept was applied to wind power generation to simplify and reduce cost of the HAWT design. The advantage of the flapping wing design lies in the additional power generated by leading edge vortices. It has previously been demonstrated by others that a flapping wing section undergoing simultaneous, coordinated heaving and pitching is capable of extracting energy from an oncoming flow using the CFD code FLUENT. The encouraging results suggest that efficiencies as high as 36.3% are achievable with such a system with the strongest influence on efficiency being reduced heaving amplitude, H/c, pitching amplitude, θ, and reduced frequency, f*. The suggested values of these motion parameters for optimal performance was found to be H/c≈1, θ≈73°, and f*≈0.15. Hence, an adjustable flapping wing energy extraction device was designed in accordance with these parameters. Preliminary testing has demonstrated the effective operation of the device over a range of Reynolds numbers in a wind tunnel.