Fluidic harvester under Train of Frozen Boxcars (TFB) loading: a parametric study

The Train of Frozen Boxcars (TFB) model has been developed for a continuous piezoelectric cantilever fluidic harvester to simplify the effective one-way interaction between the fluid and the structure for certain flows. The TFB model treats the force due to vortex or turbulent flow as a series of boxcars of different amplitudes, widths and separations advected with a constant velocity over a piezoelectric beam. In this paper, the effect of five parameters, namely the number, amplitude, width, spatial separation and advection speed of the boxcars in the TFB forcing model, is studied for four different forcing scenarios. It has been observed that an increase in the amplitude or advection velocity of the boxcars leads to an increase in the power output, whereas a saturation limit in the power output is observed with an increase in the width or number of boxcars. More importantly, however, it is concluded that the separation between boxcars is the determining factor in maximizing or minimizing the power output from the harvester.

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