Study on Performance Enhancement of a Flapping Foil Energy Harvester Using Circulation Control

Oscillating motion, an effective way to harvest energy, has gradually become a hotspot in bionic motion research in recent years. Means of improving the energy-extraction efficiency of a flapping foil harvester have long been a focus of researchers. This paper proposes a new flapping foil harvester with circulation control and explores the effects of different parameters on its energy-extraction capacity to improve efficiency and achieve lowest cost. Setting the injection ports on the upper and lower surfaces near the trailing edge of the foil and implementing injection control during motion, the effects of the location of the injection port, pitching amplitude, momentum coefficient, reduced frequency, and jet mode on the circulation control flapping foil are systematically investigated under the condition of a Reynolds number of 13,800. The results show that circulation control can enhance the energy-extraction efficiency of a flapping foil across a wide range of parameters, in which the location of the injection port and momentum coefficient have the most obvious influence on efficiency, followed by pitching amplitude and reduced frequency. In addition, the jet mode is a crucial factor affecting net efficiency. Relative to the constant mode, the triangular mode of circulation control has the lowest energy consumption, and the net energy-extraction efficiency reaches up to 38.77% under a reduced frequency of 0.12, which is 22.24% higher than that of the plain flapping foil.