Energy Harvesting for Self-Powered Sensors for Smart Transportation Infrastructure

This research aims to develop an innovative approach for energy harvesting from transportation infrastructures and demonstrate the feasibility of the approach through laboratory testing and field demonstration. The proposed innovative approach of energy harvesting, termed as electromagnetic energy harvesting system (EMEHSs), can be used to power wireless sensors commonly used for health monitoring of bridges. This EMEHS has expected to be simple, but effective in harvesting kinetic energy and converting it to electric power for wireless sensors. Practical and economic feasibility and field implementation of the device on a bridge will also be investigated in this work. Based on detailed numerical simulations and modeling, a larger-scale device will be first tested in the laboratory and then will be installed on a bridge to demonstrate the technology and its effectiveness in powering typical health monitoring sensors.