Piezoelectric energy harvesting from vehicles induced bending deformation in pavements considering the arrangement of harvesters

Abstract

• A theoretical model is established for piezoelectric energy harvesting from pavement based on the quarter car model. • The mechanism of interaction between two neighboring piezoelectric harvesters is explored. • An explicit formula for optimal arrangement of multiple PEHs is presented. • The influence of road surface roughness on the harvested energy is investigated. In this work, a theoretical model is established for piezoelectric energy harvesting from pavement subjected to a moving vehicle. The pavement is simplified as a Bernoulli–Euler beam resting on a Winkler foundation. The quarter car model is adopted to represent the vehicle–pavement interaction. The dynamic response of the pavement is derived by the modal superposition method. The voltage output is then explicitly obtained by solving a first order differential equation that describes the electrical behavior of the piezoelectric harvester. Additionally, a numerical parametric study is conducted based on the proposed model to investigate the effects of several important factors such as the vehicle types, speed, external resistive load, the arrangement of harvesters and the road surface roughness on energy output. The results show that there is an optimal distance between piezoelectric transducers to improve the efficiency of energy harvesting and the estimate formula of optimal distance is also recommended to conduct the layout of the transducers.