Aerodynamic Shape Optimization of an Arc-Plate-Shaped Bluff Body via Surrogate Modeling for Wind Energy Harvesting

Galloping-based piezoelectric wind energy harvesters (WEHs) are being used to supply renewable electricity for self-powered devices. This paper investigates the performance of a galloping-based piezoelectric WEH, with different arc-plate-shaped bluff bodies to improve harvesting efficiency. The Latin hypercube sampling method was employed to design the experiment. After conducting a series of wind tunnel tests, a Kriging surrogate model was then established, with high accuracy. The results show that the wind energy harvester with an arc angle 0.40 pi and tail length 1.26D generated the maximum power. The output power of the proposed WEH was doubled by optimizing the aerodynamic shape of the bluff body. The reasons for the improvement are discussed in detail. The force measurement results indicated that a large value of the transverse force coefficient means a large galloping response of the WEH. The aerodynamic optimization of this study can be applied to improve the performance of galloping-based wind energy harvesters.