Related papers: Leaf-inspired rain-energy harvesting device
An energy harvesting device based on nanohelices is presented. The energy harvesting scheme based on nanohelices involves the same rectification circuitry found in many household electronic goods, which converts alternating current (AC)…
Ambient energy harvesting has been in recent years the recurring object of a number of research efforts aimed at providing an autonomous solution to the powering of small-scale electronic mobile devices. Among the different solutions,…
Fluid droplets can be induced to move over rigid or flexible surfaces under external or body forces. We describe the effect of variations in material properties of a flexible substrate as a mechanism for motion. In this paper, we consider a…
Shining a tightly-focused but low-powered laser beam on an absorber dispersed in a biological fluid gives rise to spectacular growth of dendritic patterns. These result from localized drying of the fluid because of efficient absorption and…
This work presents an innovative experimental device conceived to characterize the time-dependent behavior of hygroscopic materials, as wood, at controlled moisture content and temperature. This device, the WAVET, permits the determination…
Wearable devices that integrate multiple sensors, processors, and communication technologies have the potential to transform mobile health for remote monitoring of health parameters. However, the small form factor of the wearable devices…
It was recently shown theoretically that it is possible to pull a spherical dielectric body towards the source of a laser beam [Nature Photonics {\bf 5}, 531 (2011)], a result with immediate consequences to optical manipulation of small…
The spontaneous flapping of a flag can be used to produce electrical energy from a fluid flow when coupled to a generator. In this paper, the energy harvesting performance of a flag covered by a single pair of PVDF piezoelectric electrodes…
From microfluidics to fog-harvesting applications, tiny droplets are transported along various solid substrates including hairs, threads, grooves, and other light structures. Driven by gravity, a droplet sliding along a vertical fiber is a…
Maximum output powers of vibration-driven inertial power harvesters reported in literature exhibit sizable variations, even when normalized by the device weight or their maximum linear size. To help establish a common benchmark, we present…
We consider the effect of rain on wind wave generation and dissipation. Rain falling on a wavy surface may have a marked tendency to dampen the shorter waves in the tail of the spectrum, the related range increasing with the rain rate.…
This paper combines experimental data with simple mathematical models to investigate the influence of spray formulation type and leaf character (wettability) on shatter, bounce and adhesion of droplets impacting with cotton, rice and wheat…
We report in this paper the design, the optimization and the fabrication of an electret-based cantilever energy harvester. We develop the mechanical and the electrostatic equations of such a device and its implementation using Finite…
When a free-falling liquid droplet is hit by a laser it experiences a strong ablation driven pressure pulse. Here we study the resulting droplet deformation in the regime where the ablation pressure duration is short, i.e. comparable to the…
This work applies a combined approach a reduced-order model (ROM) together with experiments and direct numerical simulations to investigate the optimal efficiency of fluid-flow energy harvesting from transverse vortex-induced vibration…
We investigate the dynamics and energy production capability of a flexible piezoelectric plate submerged close to the free surface and exposed to incident head gravity waves and current. A theoretical model is derived in which the flag and…
We report on the elastocapillary deformation of flexible microfibers in contact with liquid droplets. A fiber is observed to bend more as the size of the contacting droplet is increased. At a critical droplet size, proportional to the…
Wood-composite materials are widely used today as they homogenize humidity related directional deformations. Quantification of these deformations as coefficients is important for construction and engineering and topic of current research…
A new type of water droplet transportation on microstructured hydrophobic surface is proposed and investigated experimentally and theoretically - water droplet could be driven by scale effect which is different from the traditional methods.…
The popularity of Energy Harvesting Devices (EHDs) has grown in the past few years, thanks to their capability of prolonging the network lifetime. In reality, EHDs are affected by several inefficiencies, e.g., energy leakage, battery…