Performance Evaluation of Caudal Fin Shape for Vortex-induced Vibration Energy Harvesting

Conference proceedings article

Authors/Editors

Author list: P. Chompamon, R. Tiansiri, T. Chularak, R. Kotwongsa, S. Songschon, S. Saimek, K. Septham and T. Kamnerdtong

Publication year: 2022

Start page: 273

End page: 280

Number of pages: 8

Recently, renewable energy has gained much attention due to the global

warming crisis. This research aims to study energy harvesting from water flow using

Vortex-Induced Vibration (VIV) phenomena. The energy harvester consists of a

circular cylinder and a flexible plate attached to the caudal fin of various shapes. It

inspires by biomimicry, imitating the caudal fin shape of fish. Three shapes of caudal

fins, Truncate, Round, and Fork were chosen and compared with the plain plate for the

energy harvesting potential obtained from the oscillated movements. All those caudal

fin shapes were constructed under the control parameters, such as mass, the center of

mass, length, and surface area. The Computational Fluid dynamics (CFD) technique

and Fluid-structure interactions (FSI) were conducted to evaluate the energy harvesting

potential of the system. We investigated these systems at the inlet flow velocity of 0.5

m/s, and Reynold's number is 32,500. The result shows that the Fork-shaped fin has the

most significant average amplitude displacement of 8.35 mm, followed by the round,

truncate, and plain plate. Therefore, it can conclude that attaching the caudal fin shapes

can improve energy harvesting efficiency, and the highest efficient caudal fin shape is

Fork because it has the most significant displacement amplitude, which affects energy

harvesting when attached to a piezoelectric element.

No matching items found.