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Harvesting traffic-induced vibrations for structural health monitoring of bridges

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Published 29 September 2011 2011 IOP Publishing Ltd
, , Citation T V Galchev et al 2011 J. Micromech. Microeng. 21 104005DOI 10.1088/0960-1317/21/10/104005

0960-1317/21/10/104005

Abstract

This paper discusses the development and testing of a renewable energy source for powering wireless sensors used to monitor the structural health of bridges. Traditional power cables or battery replacement are excessively expensive or infeasible in this type of application. An inertial power generator has been developed that can harvest traffic-induced bridge vibrations. Vibrations on bridges have very low acceleration (0.1–0.5 m s−2), low frequency (2–30 Hz), and they are non-periodic. A novel parametric frequency-increased generator (PFIG) is developed to address these challenges. The fabricated device can generate a peak power of 57 µW and an average power of 2.3 µW from an input acceleration of 0.54 m s−2 at only 2 Hz. The generator is capable of operating over an unprecedentedly large acceleration (0.54–9.8 m s−2) and frequency range (up to 30 Hz) without any modifications or tuning. Its performance was tested along the length of a suspension bridge and it generated 0.5–0.75 µW of average power without manipulation during installation or tuning at each bridge location. A preliminary power conversion system has also been developed.

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