Improving Energy Harvesting from Bridge Vibration Excited by Moving Vehicles with a Bi-Stable Harvester

Abstract

To monitor the health status of the bridge, many sensors are needed to be mounted on it. Converting bridge vibration energy to electrical energy is considered as a potential solution to the problem of providing reliable electric power to these sensors. The objective of this work is to present an operable strategy for improving the electric energy output of a piezoelectric energy harvester installed on a bridge by introducing bi-stable characteristics. A bi-stable harvester is proposed. By adjusting the tip and fixed magnets, different types of potential energy can be generated, and then the harvester can exhibit the linear, mono-stable and bi-stable characteristics. In the bi-stable state, the harvester triggers snap-through motions easily and generates large outputs. The corresponding prototype was fabricated, and the experiment was carried out to validate the advantage of the bi-stable energy harvester. The experiment results show that the bi-stable energy harvester outperforms the classical linear harvester over the whole range of vehicle speed. As the vehicle speed exceeds a critical one, the snap-through motion will happen, which is beneficial to enhancing the electricity output. This conceptual design may provide guidance for promoting the performance of bridge energy harvesting.

Bridge vibration energy harvesting for wireless IoT-based structural health monitoring systems: A review

“…The linear system configuration of the device has a natural frequency of 14.5 Hz; in the monostable case, the frequency varies and at the speed of 1.07 m/s, its frequency is 4.9 Hz. Moreover, in another bi-stable configuration of the harvester (Zhou et al, 2022) the power density of 680 W/m 3 is reported at a rolling mass speed of 2.5 m/s.…”

The Design and Ground Test Verification of an Energy-Efficient Wireless System for the Fatigue Monitoring of Wind Turbine Blades Based on Bistable Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting

“…Nonlinear energy harvesting technologies aim to develop power-autonomous devices in various sectors, such as aeronautics [ 13 , 14 ], infrastructure [ 15 ], medicine [ 16 ] and wearables [ 17 ], as parts of IoT networks. The electromechanical concept of multi-stable vibration may be based on two major mechanism categories: (i) electromagnetic forces applied via the opposite polarization of magnets located on the vibrating piezoelectric structure and the supporting device [ 18 , 19 ] or (ii) base excitation and axial compressive forces acting on a piezoelectric structure up to post-buckling [ 20 , 21 ].…”