Harvesting kinetic energy from roadway pavement through an electromagnetic speed bump

Roadway pavements are repeatedly subjected to two different types of energy sources—solar radiation and kinetic energy from passing vehicles. Therefore, they have great potential to be utilized as sustainable energy sources. In this study, an electromagnetic speed bump energy harvester (ESE) prototype was developed to harvest energy from the kinetic energy of passing vehicles and to simultaneously control vehicles’ speed. The ESE absorbs the deflection generated by a passing vehicle and converts it to a rotating shaft that triggers an embedded generator. A set of laboratory tests were conducted to simulate traffic conditions and evaluate the performance of the prototype in generating electrical power. These tests investigated the effect of load magnitude, time of loading, time of unloading, and ratio of loading time to unloading time on the power output generated by the ESE. The experimental results had a maximum average power of 3.21 mW, which shows that the proposed prototype promises to generate substantial power under actual traffic loading conditions. The effect of load magnitude was negligible, while a shorter time of loading led to a higher power output, implying that the optimum vehicle speed for maximizing the power output is the speed limit in the ESE location. Four sets of linear static analyses were performed in order to evaluate the response of the prototype fabrication. The top component of the ESE was modeled using material properties of steel, aluminum, or composites of heavy-duty rubber, and the bottom frames were given steel or aluminum properties.