Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : November 07, 2019 - November 08, 2019
An energy harvesting from ocean current or tidal flow is a promising energy source for accomplishing sustainable development goals (SDGs). It is important to develop a minimal environmental impact system to expand opportunities of the energy harvesting. Although a fluttering power generation from ocean current or tidal flow is one of the methods to convert the flow energy to electricity, there are some difficulties to convert from the fluttering vibration to electricity. In this report, we considered whether it would be possible to convert ocean current kinetic energy into electric energy without any environmental loading. We suggest that a novel idea to convert the vibration induced by current flow to circulating flow to generate electrical energy. The circulating flow was generated with a phase difference between a U-shaped soft tube movement. Furthermore, the flow rate shows increasing as the phase differences between the soft tube. We have also constructed fundamental equations to explain this phenomenon. It is expected that the circulation flow can be induced by fluttering the tube using the vibrational energy obtained from the sea.
