Abstract
This paper deals with an energy harvesting review and analysis of an ambient mechanical energy on a trackside during a passing of a train. Trains provide very high level of vibration and deformation which could be converted into useful electricity. Due to maintenance and safety reasons a rail trackside includes sensing systems and number of sensor nodes is increased for modern transportation. Recent development of modern communication and ultra-low power electronics allows to use energy harvesting systems as autonomous source of electrical energy for these trackside objects. Main aim of this paper is model-based design of proposed vibration energy harvesting systems inside sleeper and predict harvested power during the train passing. Measurements of passing train is used as input for simulation models and harvested power is calculated. This simulation of proposed energy harvesting device is very useful for future design.
Highlights
Evolution on train monitoring and signalling needs to be accompanied by an investigation of new technologies to be applied in the rail environment
Main aim of this paper is summarizing of potential autonomous sources of electrical energy for rail transportation [2], mainly for smart low power objects on trackside environment
A generic idealized linear simulation model (1) of kinetic energy harvester with constant electrical and mechanical damping factors and variable natural frequency was fed with triangular acceleration pulses of variable width to determine the optimal tuning of the harvester with respect to the total energy harvested from one set of triangular pulses (Fig. 4)
Summary
Evolution on train monitoring and signalling needs to be accompanied by an investigation of new technologies to be applied in the rail environment. Main aim of this paper is summarizing of potential autonomous sources of electrical energy for rail transportation [2], mainly for smart low power objects on trackside environment. The trackside environment provides several potential principles of energy harvesting from mechanical energy in a form of mechanical vibration, rail deformation and sleeper or rail sag, etc. There are several sources of mechanical energy which are forced by a passing train These mechanical sources of energy could be very useful for autonomous powering of monitoring, sensing, signalling and communication objects in the trackside environment. The passing wheel could run over a flexible element which could transform kinetic or potential energy into electricity by linear generator [10] (type 8). Displacement energy harvesting devices have a potential to harvest electricity in range of tens watts but these devices require maintenance
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