Integrated Structures for Multimode Ambient Energy Harvesting

从环境中收集能量可以使无线电子设备无限期地工作。这个项目是为了开发一个灵活的、多功能的结构，可以从入射的阳光和周围的气流中产生电力。这种设备可以成为无线传感器或移动机器人的理想电源，在这些地区，硬线电源不可用，电池更换成本高昂或不切实际。风能和太阳能的结合利用了两种主要的环境能源，并将使能量收集系统白天和黑夜都能工作。这里开发的技术将造福社会和环境，通过提供一种新的方法来制造自力更生的传感设备，而不依赖于短期和对环境有害的消耗性电池。这些传感器可以为桥梁和建筑物提供结构健康监测，收集偏远地区的天气或生态数据，以帮助了解全球气候变化，改善关键基础设施周围的安全，甚至提供洪水或海啸等自然灾害的早期预警。此外，风能和太阳能混合能源收集器的低姿态和集成性质也可以用于城市地区的屋顶和外部，为可持续建筑供电。除了技术目标之外，该项目还将通过北卡罗来纳州公立学院的多所大学项目培训研究生，并为代表性不足的本科生提供指导的暑期研究经验。这项工作将创造一种集成的太阳能和风能混合能源收集器，它具有无与伦比的简单性和坚固性，低质量，与单独的太阳能电池阵列相比，几何足迹的增加可以忽略不计。设想中的装置将由一系列细长的、带状的、柔性薄膜太阳能电池组成，这些电池由压电片层压而成。这些压电太阳能带将在纵向张力下安装，并暴露在横向气流中，形成一个流体弹性系统，该系统将在很宽的风速范围内经历气动弹性极限环振荡（LCO），使它们在气流中像拨弦的吉他弦一样振动。这些振动将在压电层中产生循环应变，产生可整流的交流电，用于给存储元件充电或为电气负载供电。另一方面，太阳能电池将直接将入射阳光转化为直流电。

Harvesting energy from the environment can allow wireless electronic devices to operate indefinitely. This project is for the development of a flexible, multifunctional structure that can generate electrical power from both incident sunlight and ambient wind flow. Such a device could be an ideal power source for wireless sensors or mobile robots in areas where hardwired power is unavailable and battery replacement is costly or impractical. Combining wind and solar power takes advantage of the two major sources of ambient energy and would allow the energy harvesting system to operate both day and night. The technology developed here will benefit society and the environment by offering a new approach for creating self-reliant sensing devices that does not rely on short-term and environmentally hazardous consumable batteries. These sensors could provide structural health monitoring for bridges and buildings, collect weather or ecological data in remote areas to help understand global climate change, improve security around critical infrastructure, or even provide early warnings about natural disasters like floods or Tsunamis. In addition, the low profile and integrated nature of a wind and solar hybrid energy harvester could also be useful on rooftops and exteriors in urban areas to power sustainable buildings. In addition to its technical objectives, this project will train graduate students and provide mentored summer research experiences for underrepresented undergraduate students through a multi-university program among North Carolina's public colleges.This work will create an integrated, solar and wind hybrid energy harvester that offers unparalleled simplicity and robustness, low mass, and a negligible increase in geometric footprint compared to a solar array alone. The envisioned device will consist of an array of slender, ribbon-like, flexible thin film solar cells that are laminated with piezoelectric patches. These piezo-solar ribbons will be mounted in longitudinal tension and exposed to a transverse wind flow, creating a fluid-elastic system that will experience aeroelastic limit cycle oscillations (LCO) over a broad range of wind speeds, causing them to vibrate in the flow like plucked guitar strings. These vibrations will produce cyclic strains in the piezoelectric layers, generating an alternating current that can be rectified and used to charge storage elements or power electrical loads. The solar cells, on the other hand, will directly transduce incident sunlight into direct current.