Highway speed vehicle-pavement energy harvester: ride comfort and energy dissipation

Pavement-embedded mechanical energy harvesting systems (EHSs) recover energy from moving vehicles. However, movable plates may influence ride comfort and increase vehicle energy consumption. A coupled vehicle-EHS interaction framework was developed to evaluate the influence of EHS excitation on ride comfort and energy dissipation. A dual-plate EHS model based on moving axle loads was integrated with an eight-degree-of-freedom (8DOF) passenger car model and a 21DOF semi-trailer truck model. Ride comfort was evaluated using ISO 2631-1 weighted acceleration metrics. EHS-induced excess energy consumption was quantified through damping dissipation and tyre-plate structural work and related to road roughness and transverse rumble strip excitation.EHS interaction wasgoverned by axle load, tyre contact length, vehicle speed and tyre-plate interaction duration. For a 5-mm displacement limit, weighted accelerations for both vehicle classes remained well below the comfort threshold. Increasing the allowable displacement limit from 5 to 25 mm indicated that larger plate displacements could be used while maintaining acceptable ride comfort.Tyre-plate structural work exceeded vehicle damping dissipation during EHS interaction. Normalised energy comparisons showed that EHS dissipation was significantly greater than that caused by road roughness per unit length, but lower than rumble-strip excitation. The findings inform EHS deployment and future life-cycle assessment..