Energy vibration harvesting for supplying sensors networks in railway vehicles monitoring

In the present work a study of energy harvester for vehicle monitoring design is studied. Mechanical vibrations of railway vehicles were used to generate electric power by means of a piezoelectric energy harvester. The power was successively stored in a battery and used to supply one node of the sensors network, which is used to monitor the structural integrity of the most critical components of the vehicle and to prevent their failure. The piezoelectric harvester was preliminary characterized to investigate its electric and dynamic performances, and then tested on a scaled railway bogie moved by a roller rig.