Taguchi-Based Experimental Investigation of Vortex-Induced Vibration (VIV) Energy Converter under a Controlled Environment

Globally, most of the energy consumption rely on non- renewable energy sources which is inevitably going to run out for the future generations. To promote the use of renewable energy, the researchers aim to fabricate and test a prototype vortex-induced vibration (VIV) energy harvester by integrating it with the spring-loaded mechanism and linear generator. The resulting electrical power output was measured by varying input parameters such as spring width, spring length, and flow velocity. Taguchi's parametric design of Taguchi method was used to facilitate the design of experiment. Minitab 17 was used for the statistical software to analyze the signal-to-noise ratio and perform the analysis of variance (ANOVA) while Fusion 360 software was used to create the drawing model. The cylinders were bought, incorporated, and tested with the fabricated VIV energy harvester. Having the prototype worked; it was known that linear generators can be used in replacement for piezoelectric for kinetic to electric energy conversion. The experimental results show the behavior of the combined parameters and revealed that the best combination is A
₁
B
₃
C
₃
which optimized the power output to 71.41mW with a 90.03% accuracy when compared to the Taguchi estimation. The ANOVA results revealed that all the parameters were significant, and the most influential parameter is stream velocity.