Harvesting traffic-induced vibrations for structural health monitoring of bridges

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. (Some figures in this article are in colour only in the electronic version)