Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting from A Fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Abstract

In this paper, the energy harvesting potential from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) wing is discussed. A fixed-wing UAV implemented for surveillance and reconnaissance purposes is investigated in the present work. A piezoelectric patch is embedded into the UAV wingbox, serving as the energy harvesting structure. The structural deformation exerted by a discrete gust load during normal flight condition is utilised as the source of electrical energy. An advanced iterative finite element method (FEM) is applied as the computational tool. The result pointed out that the piezoelectric patch could successfully harvest the energy from the structural vibration.