Field Evaluation of Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters on Bridge Structure

This study aims to develop and evaluate vibration-based piezoelectric energy harvesters for generating power from a bridge structure. New designs of multiple-degree-of-freedom (DOF) cantilevers were proposed evaluated in laboratory on full-scale bridge. It was found that all cantilever showed potential 35 V voltage outputs under simple sinusoidal vibration scenario the laboratory. Field testing results match between frequencies structure resonant significantly affected output harvester moving tire loads. Through adding more DOF same cantilever, attenuation peaks generated by turned be less significant after each load passing, leading greater some cases. With adjusting mass combination 3-DOF design, production reached 11.1 58.2 μJ one single loading pulse, respectively, which higher than 9.2 14.9 obtained best 1-DOF cantilevers. The findings indicate developing multi-band harvesting vibrations.