Piezoelectric vibration energy harvesting for rail transit bridge with steel-spring floating slab track system

Abstract Taking two (4 × 40) m continuous rail transit rigid bridges as practical examples, the train-SSFST (steel-spring floating slab track)-bridge system was established to acquire the vehicle induced vibration responses on SSFST. Based on the concept of combing cymbal PE-VEH and multilayer stacks PE-VEH together, a kind of PE-VEH featured small size, lightweight, high bearing capacity and excellent efficiency in energy harvesting is proposed. The prominent highlight of the designed PE-VEH is the force amplifying mechanism composed of cover plates and bending plates, which is of great help in improving the energy harvesting efficiency. Secondly, the 6 multilayer piezoelectric stacks are favorable to meet the requirements of small dimensions when bearing the vehicle induced vertical steel-spring fulcrum forces. Dynamic simulation results showed that the optimum positions for the designed PE-VEH to be connected in series with the steel-springs is at the end of the floating concrete slab (FCS). Comparing with existed low-frequency PE-VEHs through evaluating by indicators of power density and NPD, the excellent energy output efficiency of the designed PE-VEH is demonstrated, and influence on the practical train-SSFST-bridge system is negligible as well. For the example bridge, with 144 PE-VEHs arranged on 36 blocks of FCS, the total energy power obtained would reach up to 31.4 kJ, enough to satisfy the normal use of intermittent collection and transmission components for wireless BHM.