Novel Energy Harvesting Systems in aeronautics

The exploitation of novel Energy Harvesting Systems (EHS) in aeronautics is crucial to increase aircraft performance and structural health monitoring capabilities. Preliminary trials to assess the performance of both piezo- and thermo-electric generators bonded onto composite laminates have been completed at a scale representative of real service conditions. This is to correlate the driving force intensity (i.e. mechanical vibration or thermal gradient) to the generated output voltage, whilst assessing the system potential to power up downstream monitoring sensors during service.

In the mechanical vibration test, the composite assembly with a commercial-based piezo-electric generator (PEG) is positioned on a shaker table and exposed to different vibration profiles (i.e. measured during a regional aircraft service or established by a standards organisation to assess performance and durability). In the thermal test, the composite assembly with an InComEss-based generator (TEG) is introduced in a climate chamber and exposed to different thermal gradients (up to 70 °C representative of de-icing system operation).

The tests demonstrated that both patches are responsive to the imposed driving forces, with the possibility to harvest an energy conveyed towards aircraft safety rather than being dissipated. Whilst these results are supporting the setup of the InComEss-based piezo-electric generator, additional research efforts are needed to further increase the electric output characteristics of the InComEss-based thermo-electric generator from mV to V to make efficient the feeding of monitoring sensors versus current baseline solutions.