Energy harvesting in pavement from passing vehicles with piezoelectric composite plate for ice melting

An energy harvester in the road pavement made from a piezoelectric composite plate is designed and studied to collect energy from the passing vehicles for the ice melting aim. Piezoelectric material has the ability to produce electric charge on its surface when strain takes place due to any external loading. Based on this property, a rectangular composite plate harvester is developed consisting of piezoelectric material as the energy generation coating layer and A514 steel as the substrate layer to realize the energy harvesting process from the variable pressure generated in the road pavement by passing vehicles. Based on Westergaards stress model, a numerical model is developed to calculate the three dimensional stress distribution in the pavement. Numerical simulations are conducted to study the optimization of various parameters of the harvester, such as depth of the harvester in the pavement, length and width as well as thicknesses of piezoelectric layer and the substrate. By taking in to consideration the maximum stress that can be sustained by both of the piezoelectric material and also the substrate material, an optimum design of the piezoelectric couple composite plate energy harvester is suggested. It is seen that the maximum output power, which can be generated by a single patch of 0.2m*0.2m*0.0026m dimension with a vehicle passing at 22.2 m/s, can reach up to 23.36 W. With the well-designed pavement energy harvesters, it is feasible to collect enough energy to rise the temperature of the ice with the thickness of 1cm covering a 5m width road by 20 degree Celsius within 2.5 hours. This technique can be applied to melt the ice on the roads and bridges especially in cold countries.