Harvesting Vibration Energy from Vehicle Suspension System for Mileage Improvement

Global concerns on energy have motivated a strong research in energy-scavenging technologies. This paper deals with harnessing of the vibration energy from vehicle suspension system for application in charging of an onboard battery. It is proposed to harvest mechanical vibration energy from a vehicle suspension system to improve the mileage of hybrid vehicles. The impact of road roughness and vehicle speed on the amount of harvested electrical power from the vehicle suspension was explored. A critical design issue was discovered: the need to design the system's natural frequency to match the frequency of the driving vibration for maximum power harvesting. It was further discovered that greater power can be harnessed when the compressibility ratio is less than zero. Electromagnetic power converter model is proposed to harness the wasted vibration energy from the suspension system. Numerical results show that averagely 2.16 kW of electricity can be harvested from the suspension system assembly, resulting in mileage improvement of about 4.91 miles for the electric vehicle considered.