Limit Cycle Oscillation Analysis on the Design of Wind Power Harvester with Fluttering Aerofoil

Abstract

This paper presents a new concept of wind power harvester which extracts the energy from the flow through an aeroelastic vibration phenomenon. Different from traditional rotating wind turbines, a fluttering aerofoil in the form of transversal and rotational motions is used in the process. Analysis of flutter characteristics in frequency domain is carried out to determine the flutter stability boundary. The energy is extracted at the wind speed above the flutter boundary where the system may become nonlinear. The operating range of the device is set up at a stabilized oscillation in the nonlinear zone by regulating the pitching motion limited to a certain angular travelling distance.