Analysis of the prospective vibrational energy harvesting of heavy-duty truck suspensions: A simulation approach

Automobiles are considered as a large-scale vibrational source what makes automotive is a target to harvest such a considerable kinetic energy otherwise being dissipated by traditional viscous shock absorbers. The power dissipation during the damping events can be partially regenerated based on linear or rotary electromagnetic energy-harvesting dampers. This paper analytically discusses the potential power content of a class-6 heavy-duty truck with respect to different driving circumstances. Considering variable speed schedules of heavy vehicles, 10 driving cycles are proposed in creating ISO based random road profiles with variable speed vectors including both aggressive and nonaggressive driving trips. Further, the laden and the unladen truck cases were considered in the analysis with respect to 6-DOFs truck suspension model. Additionally, the energy harvesting and truck comfort were investigated over the running conditions. Given the results, a potential power content of 71–434 W and 287–1733 are available for ISO road grades of C and D, respectively, for a fully-loaded truck. The results suggested that the higher power quantity is related to aggressive body-wheel relative movements in which such conditions are found in case of the aggressive driving events and the vehicles with greater mass such as the heavy trucks and off-road vehicles.