Efficiency evaluation of energy harvesting from discrete gust response for plate wing

Gust response of aircraft can become a potential energy source thanks to energy harvesting (EH) methods, one of which can transform mechanical energy to electrical energy, applying piezoelectric ceramic transducers (PZTs). Harvested electrical energy needs to be evaluated for reuse, but current beam-model-based evaluation methods of EH performance for a plate model are insufficient because the plate is two-dimensional. This paper proposes two types of EH evaluation methods to analyze the gust exciting low-aspect-ratio plate wing model. One method focuses on the ratio of electrical energy to kinetic energy, and the other reflects energy output density per unit weight. These two methods can reveal the higher energy harvesting efficiency positions when utilizing PZTs on the flight EH system. Plate model, three-dimensional doublet lattice unsteady aeroelastic method and piezoelectric equation are used to build piezoaeroelastic wing model, and 1-cosine discrete gust load is the base excitation. A time-domain aero-electro-elastic state-space equation of the low-aspect-ratio piezoaeroelastic plate wing model is established, and the time-history analysis is used to solve the EH output. Results show that EH outputs are influenced by various parameters including load resistance, PZT thickness, gust intensity and wavelength, and PZT location variation. The optimal values of the proposed EH efficiency evaluation methods are found and explained.