Arc-shaped flutter-driven wind speed sensor based on triboelectric nanogenerator for unmanned aerial vehicle

At present, it is significant for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to sense the external information in the interference environment. Therefore, an arc-shaped flutter-driven wind speed sensor based on triboelectric nanogenerator (AW-TENG) for UAV is proposed in this work. The arc structure of AW-TENG, which adopts contact separation mode through air vibration, is designed according to the working principle and simulation. Then the three influencing factors of plate spacing, radian and radian direction are carried out to determine its optimal structure. The performance of the optimal structure is verified: the voltage frequency that AW-TENG can reach in the wind speed range of 6–20 m/s is 50–200 Hz, the sensitivity is 9.88 Hz/(m s−1) and the goodness of fit R2 = 0.998. Meanwhile, the voltage range that AW-TENG can reach is about 30–55 V, the generated current range is about 8–28 μA. Finally, the application experiment of the wireless wind speed transmission of the UAV with AW-TENG is carried out. The experiment proves that TENG has the ability to apply the wind speed sensor for UAV, and provides experimental support for the wind speed monitoring of the overall structural unit of UAV in the future.