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Origami-inspired metamaterials for wind energy harvesting
Feng, Huijuan, Xu, Ben Bin
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Department of Mechanical & Construction Engineering, Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne NE1 8ST, UK
Contact: ben.xu@northumbria.ac.uk
Wind energy harvesting attracts increasing research interest in the past decade due to its advantages in renewability and environmental friendliness. In recent years, metamaterials have been employed to improve energy harvesting efficiency from three aspects including directly integrated multifunctional design strategy, defect state mode and negative refraction induced wave focusing phenomenon. Here we explore the potential applications of origamiinspired metamaterials in wind energy harvesting from the design of wind turbine blades and wind energy harvesters. First, we can assemble modular metamaterial units to build lighter and longer wind turbine blades at the site to avoid the transportation issue, disassemble the used turbine blade on-site and reuse the units to improve their recyclability. Second, the blade can be designed to respond dynamically and passively to changes in wind strength to generate more kinetic energy that will be converted to electricity. Third, the concept of metamaterial can be adopted in the design of the bluff body of the wind energy harvester to alter its aerodynamics for improving the energy harvesting efficiency and in the design of the host structure to enhance the energy harvesting performance, i.e., to reduce the cut-in wind speed and increase the power output. Therefore, origami-inspired metamaterials pave a promising way for wind energy harvesting.
