Railway vehicle induced vibration energy harvesting and saving of rail transit segmental prefabricated and assembling bridges

Taking a continuous rigid segmental prefabrication and assembly bridge on Guangzhou Metro No.14 as example, railway vehicle induced vibration energy harvesting and saving was studied in this paper. By modeling multi-body dynamics system of B-type railway vehicle and the wheel-rail interaction relationship, train-track-bridge (TTB) response was calculated accurately. Through dynamic analysis of the TTB system with two different track irregularity conditions, vertical acceleration time histories of the track slab were acquired. Based on this, a new type of electromagnetic vibration energy harvesters (EM-VEHs) is proposed. Utilizing the track slab vibration, the EM-VEHs set adjacent to the track slab are demonstrated to be feasible to supply enough power for strain collection units or GPS data transmission units in bridge health monitoring system. Compared with previous research, the power density of the proposed EM-VEH device is much higher. The application prospect of the proposed EM-VEH on urban mass transit SPA bridges is worthy to be anticipated.