A vibration energy harvester for freight train track self-powered application

Genshuo Liu; Zheng Fang; Zutao Zhang; Xing Tan; Chutian Dai; Xiaoping Wu; Zhou Jin; Dongyang Li

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2022.105155

A vibration energy harvester for freight train track self-powered application

iScience. 2022 Sep 17;25(10):105155. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.105155. eCollection 2022 Oct 21.

Authors

Genshuo Liu^{1

2}, Zheng Fang^{1

2}, Zutao Zhang^{1

2}, Xing Tan^{1

2}, Chutian Dai^{1

2}, Xiaoping Wu^{1

2}, Zhou Jin³, Dongyang Li³

Affiliations

¹ School of Mechanical Engineering, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu 610031, PR. China.
² Yibin Research Institute, Southwest Jiaotong University, Yibin 644000, PR. China.
³ China Railway Wuhan Electrification Bureau Group Shanghai Electric Co., Ltd, Shanghai 201799, PR. China.

Abstract

The safe and stable operation of the widely distributed freight trains urgently needs to solve the power supply problem of the freight train track monitoring network. In this article, an innovative and efficient energy harvesting mechanism is designed based on a mechanical vibration rectifier (MVR), with four modules of motion conversion, motion rectification, generator, and storage. The motion conversion module converts the linear vibration of the rail into rotational motion through the ball screw. The motion rectification module integrates mechanical rectification and transmission speed-up and converts the bidirectional rotation of the transmission shaft into a faster unidirectional rotation of the generator. Experiments show that the power and mechanical efficiency of the proposed vibration energy harvester can reach 28.0416W and 75.92%, respectively. This high-performance MVR can meet the power demand of wireless sensor networks by harvesting vibration energy to ensure the normal operation of freight trains.

Keywords: Energy materials; Energy transportation; Materials chemistry; Materials science.