Performance Evaluation and Parameter SensitivityofSpeed Bump Energy HarvesterPassed by Various Vehicles

Abstract

Commonly, road bumps are used to reduce vehicle speeds thus improving safety for pedestrians. Recently, there is an increased interest to exploit road bumps in developing energy harvesting. This paper compares the vehicle suspension dynamics when pass over conventional and energy harvesting speed bumps with different speeds. Numerical simulations are based on various types of vehicles including passenger cars, buses, and trucks. Results show that at lower speeds, vehicles give better performance in case of energy harvesting speed bumps than conventional bumps and this performance is more improved for heavy duty vehicles. Additionally, the sensitivities of suspension performance and harvestable power to the speed bump energy harvester, [SBEH], parameters are investigated and addressed. This parameter sensitivity study demonstrates that SBEH mass, SBEH equivalent damping, and the maximum allowable displacement of the bump have significant effect on the suspension performance and the harvestable power. So we use also Genetic Algorithm (GA) based on multi-objective optimization techniques to search the optimal values of these significant parameters of the SBEH considering the trade-off between ride comfort, road handling, and harvested energy.