Novel Structural Design of a Piezo Transducer for Roadway Power Harvesting Applications

The roadway power harvesting project was started to design and produce a working prototype of a piezoelectric based power harvesting aimed at harvesting power from vehicles. The system is composed of a rubber speed bump with arrays of piezoelectric transducers. The transducers are connected to power harvesting circuitry that can capture and store energy generated by the transducers and then deliver it at a specific voltage to a generic load application. This thesis focuses on the hardware aspect of the project, more specifically the design and fabrication and experimental validation of a novel piezoelectric transducer that incorporates both radial slits with circumferential preloading of each transducer in order to maximize power generation per transducer. The designs undergo finite element analysis for appropriate parameter determination. Finally the fully constructed system is tested both on a hydraulic loading machine and with a road vehicle and determined to be a 113 % improvement over a conventional cymbal transducer design.