Engineering Research Practice: Road Bump Energy Harvesting Analysis

This assignment presents a student's research on the potential of harvesting energy from road bumps to generate electricity. The research addresses the issue of wasted energy dissipated when vehicles pass over speed bumps, proposing an innovative road rib design to convert kinetic energy into electricity. The student's research outlines the general background of the problem, the clear research questions, and the proposed method of harnessing energy using a stainless steel unit. This unit utilizes a motion rectifier to convert the irregular impulse into the unidirectional rotation of generators, thereby maintaining high-speed rotation and improving efficiency. The research also details the process's simplicity and the testing methodology involving passenger cars. The assignment is based on the Engineering Research Practice course and includes references to relevant literature.

RESEARCH METHOD FOR ENGINEERS
By Name
Course
Instructor
Institution
Location
Date

Research Question
“Is there a means of harnessing the wasted dissipated energy when a vehicle passes over the
safety road bumps?”
General Back Ground
As the volume of the traffic increases on the daily used roads, there is likelihood of the increase
in the injuries which are related to the vehicles. These are commonly describes as the vehicular
collisions. In most of the residential areas, the flow of the traffic is known to peak during the
common travelling hours. The common hours include morning when most of the families are
driving to school or work, rush hours after most of the facilities are close and finally after school
when pick up programs take place. In all the sector of the transport, safety is regarded as the
primary requirement (Mohamed et al 2015).
The process of enhancing safety does not only target the motorists but the pedestrian as well. In
some instances, the density of the traffic becomes so great to the extent that it cannot be
monitored manually. In fact in such cases, the manual processes of monitoring may not comply
with the sped requirements. As part of the control measures of the traffic, there has been
adoption of the speed bumps (Hassanien 2015)
A speed bump refers to an area preferably small and raised in a road typically to the height
between -4 inches and with the length value between 1-3 feet. Their design on the road are meant
to compel vehicles to have their speeds slowed down to almost 15-20 miles an hour without
necessarily causing discomfort to the driver or leading to the damage of the vehicle. One of the
benefits for having installed speed bumps in the residential areas is the increased safety which is
much required by the pedestrians (Ghadge, Pandey, and Kalbande 2015).

Clear Research Questions
“Is there a means of harnessing the wasted dissipated energy when a vehicle passes over the
safety road bumps?”
It is regrettable to note that significant amount of energy is wasted as the vehicles pass over the
bumps. There need for the design of a road rib which will be capable of harnessing energy in the
form of electricity. The energy is harnessed from the excitation of the impulsion as the vehicle
passes through the bump meant for speed control. This unique energy conversion unit (a rod Rib)
is considered as a proposal to the challenge of harnessing large scale impulse energy. It utilizes
the mechanisms of the motion rectifier (Yannis, Kondyli and Georgopoulou 2014).
How ribs Harness
The unit which is made up of purely stainless steel provides a surface where the body of the car
is rested. When the surface moves down, it actuates the rack which is attached to it. Since the
rack will mesh with the gear (Pinion type), it will lead to the shaft rotation. There is
incorporation system of the pinion with the gear such that for every backward motion there will
be at least three times shaft forward rotation hence increase speed. The speed is just enough to
lead into the rotation of the generator’s rotor. Since the rotation of the rotor is within the static
magnetic stator, it will results into cutting of the magnetic flux leading to the production of
electric motive force. The emf which is generated will be sent to the bridge for rectification
which involves conversion of the AC to DC before the regulated current is sent to the battery for
storage.

Process Simplicity
When compared to the conventional electrical voltage rectifier, the proposed rod rib will be
capable of directly converting the irregular impulse into the unidirectional direction of the
rotation of the generators. It will also be capable of maintaining very high-speed rotation through
disconnection with the driving of the low-speed (Antić et al.2013). The adopted mechanism of
the motion will allow for harvesting of the energy from both upward impulses as well as
downward impulses. This will be equivalent to more than three times the efficiency of the
conventional harvester of the bump units. In order to determine the functionality of the proposed

unit, the system will be tested by the use of the passenger car. In the test, the road rib will be
used as a prototype.
REFERENCES
Antić, B., Pešić, D., Vujanić, M. and Lipovac, K., 2013. The influence of speed bumps heights to
the decrease of the vehicle speed–Belgrade experience. Safety Science, 57, pp.303-312.
Ghadge, M., Pandey, D. and Kalbande, D., 2015, October. Machine learning approach for
predicting bumps on road. In 2015 International Conference on Applied and Theoretical
Computing and Communication Technology (iCATccT) (pp. 481-485). IEEE.
Mohamed, A., Fouad, M.M.M., Elhariri, E., El-Bendary, N., Zawbaa, H.M., Tahoun, M. and
Hassanien, A.E., 2015. RoadMonitor: An intelligent road surface condition monitoring system.
In Intelligent Systems' 2014 (pp. 377-387). Springer, Cham.

Yannis, G., Kondyli, A. and Georgopoulou, X., 2014. Investigation of the impact of low cost
traffic engineering measures on road safety in urban areas. International journal of injury control
and safety promotion, 21(2), pp.181-189.