Ambient Vibration Energy Harvesting for Vehicle Suspension System

The push for sustainable and energy-efficient automotive technologies has led to a surge in interest in harvesting ambient vibration energy from vehicle suspension systems. In a conventional suspension system, all of the vibrational energy is turned into heat, so a lot of energy is lost in normal vehicle operation. To overcome this problem, in this work an electromagnetic vibration energy harvester is considered, which is designed to convert oscillatory motion into usable electrical power. The system is comprised of a moving N52 neodymium magnet assembly and stationary copper coils. Faraday’s law of electromagnetic induction is applied to this setup to generate alternating voltage. An AC voltage is rectified by a Schottky diode bridge and stored in a bank of super capacitors for efficient energy buffering. The stored energy is regulated to a stable 12 V output for driving low-consumption automotive using a DC–DC boost converter. Experimental results show that the system is able to produce about 1.16 W per unit of suspension at typical vibration frequencies. The energy harvested is enough to power sensors, monitoring modules and microcontrollers without drawing power from the main electrical system of the vehicle. The proposed design improves the energy utilization in the vehicle while reducing dependence on batteries or alternators. This work generally confirms the feasibility of vibration-based energy harvesting as an environment friendly approach to improve electrical efficiency of modern automotive systems.