Abstract:Underwater wireless sensor networks can provide support for marine resource exploration, marine disaster warning, maintenance of maritime rights and interests, and marine security defense. However, the traditional way of using batteries to power the sensors requires termly charging or replacing them, and it is difficult to ensure the continuous and reliable work for a long time. The dielectric elastomer-based energy harvesting technology can solve the in-situ power supply problem. Due to the problem that the dielectric elastomer generators (DEGs) output less electrical energy in underwater energy harvesting, the dynamic response and energy harvesting performance of the DEG is investigated by the developed theorical model to explore the effective method for performance improvement. Results show that increasing the load resistance or time ratio of the stretching process in a cycle period can improve the energy density of the DEG. The conclusion can prove guidance for optimizing the DEG to enhance the performance in underwater energy harvesting.
