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| Research on the Influence of Airfoil Shape and Thickness on the Aeroelastic Vibration |
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Abstract The airfoil-based flutter piezoelectric energy harvester can convert the vibrational energy of natural environmental fluids into usable electrical energy, thereby providing continuous self-powering for low-power wireless sensors and other micro-electromechanical systems for their entire operational life usually placed in remote or inaccessible places. However, the current airfoil-based flutter piezoelectric energy harvesters existed some bottleneck problems such as a relatively high critical airflow velocity, narrow working frequency bandwidth, and poor energy harvesting performance. To address these challenges, this paper numerically investigates the effect of the airfoil cross-sectional shapes and thickness parameters on the aerodynamic response by using Computational Fluid Dynamics. Therein, the airfoil is subjected to aerodynamic loads, and exerts a decisive influence on the aeroelastic vibration characteristics of the flutter piezoelectric energy harvester. First, the configuration of airfoil-based flutter piezoelectric energy harvester is proposed, and five airfoil cross-sectional shapes and five airfoil thicknesses are designed; Then, the finite volume simulation model is established, the governing equations of the airfoil-based flutter is derived, and the simulation methods as well as parameters are selected; Finally, the aeroelastic vibration characteristics under different cross-sectional shapes and airfoil thicknesses are investigated numerically. The results demonstrate that the airfoil cross-sectional shape and thickness significantly affect the aeroelastic vibration response. The asymmetric S-shaped and concave-convex airfoils exhibited a larger aerodynamic moment over the symmetric airfoils. Compared with other airfoil shapes, the symmetric airfoil generates largest aerodynamic force of 12.23 N and lowest moment of 0.20 N·m at 18 m/s, thereby achieving a larger aeroelastic vibration response. When the airflow velocity is 18 m/s, the oscillation displacement of 0.047 m for the symmetric airfoil is obtained. When the thickness of symmetrical airfoil is designed to be 30 mm, the aerodynamic force of 29.73 N is acquired, and thus the larger aeroelastic vibration response is obtained. These findings provide valuable guidance for designing the high-efficient airfoil-based flutter piezoelectric energy harvester, and promotes the actual applications in the low-power wireless sensor systems.
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Received: 17 December 2025
Published: 28 October 2026
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2026, Vol. 47 
