Bistable Wind-Induced Vibration Energy Harvester for Self-Powered Wireless Sensors in Smart Bridge Monitoring Systems

摘要

Low reliability and high maintenance cost of using power and data cables are two main reasons motivating theapplication of the self-powered wireless sensors for structural health monitoring (SHM) systems in bridge structures. Onthe other hand, energy harvesting systems have been introduced as a solution for the current limitations of the batterypoweredwireless sensors associated with the finite life-span of batteries and their replacements. The objective in thispaper is to propose a new optimized nonlinear energy harvesting concept, namely Bistable Energy Harvesting (BEH)system, for smart SHM of bridge structures. In this study, a dynamic analysis of the energy harvesting system for cablesupportedbridges subject to wind-induced vibration is carried out and the feasibility of the energy harvesting device isinvestigated. This paper presents efficient linear and nonlinear energy harvesting systems for wireless monitoring oflong-span cable-supported bridges. It is shown that level of the extracted energy from such energy harvesting system isquite sufficient to supply energy for self-powered sensors of a bridge health monitoring system. This study is to promotethe recent line of research on self-powered sensor networks for smart bridge monitoring being performed at the FloridaInternational University.