3D printed energy harvesters for railway bridges-Design optimisation

This paper investigates the optimal design of 3D printed energy harvesters for railway bridges. The type of harvester studied is a cantilever bimorph beam with a mass at the tip and a load resistance. These parameters are adjusted to find the optimal design that tunes the harvester to the fundamenta...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Cámara Molina, Javier Cristóbal, Moliner, Emma, Martínez Rodríguez, María Dolores, Connolly, David P., Yurchenko, D., Galvín, Pedro, Romero Ordóñez, Antonio
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2023
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Sevilla (US)
Repositorio:idUS. Depósito de Investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla
OAI Identifier:oai:idus.us.es:11441/143515
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/11441/143515
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ymssp.2023.110133
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Piezoelectric energy harvesting
Railway bridges
High-speed train
Cantilever bimorph beam
Additive manufacturing
Genetic algorithm
Descripción
Sumario:This paper investigates the optimal design of 3D printed energy harvesters for railway bridges. The type of harvester studied is a cantilever bimorph beam with a mass at the tip and a load resistance. These parameters are adjusted to find the optimal design that tunes the harvester to the fundamental frequency of the bridge. An analytical model based on a variational formulation to represent the electromechanical behaviour of the device is presented. The optimisation problem is solved using a genetic algorithm with constraints of geometry and structural integrity. The proposed procedure is implemented in the design and manufacture of an energy harvesting device for a railway bridge on an in-service high-speed line. To do so, first the methodology is validated experimentally under laboratory conditions and shown to offer strong performance. Next the in-situ railway bridge is instrumented using accelerometers and the results used to evaluate energy harvesting performance. The results show the energy harvested in a time window of three and a half hours (20 train passages) is E=109.32 mJ . The proposed methodology is particularly useful for bridges with fundamental mode shapes above 4.5 Hz, however optimal design curves are also presented for the most common railway bridges found in practice. A novelty of this work is the use of additive manufacturing to 3D print energy harvesters, thus maximising design flexibility and energy performance.