A novel design of an energy harvesting pavement system (EHPS) is introduced in this paper. The basic concept behind this design is to transform asphalt layers into a piezoelectric energy harvester to collect dissipated vehicle kinetic energy in a large-scale system. This EHPS design consists of two conductive asphalt layers and one piezoelectric material layer. To verify the feasibility of the design, this ongoing study theoretically analyzed the EHPS via a three-degree-of-freedom electromechanical model and practically tested a prototype in the laboratory. As a result, voltage outputs measured in the laboratory from the prototype design matched those estimated from the electromechanical model. Through testing the effects of several components in the EHPS on electricity generation, this study confirms that using more flexible conductive asphalt mixtures and arranging more piezoelectric elements with a higher piezoelectric stress constant can increase electrical outputs from the EHPS. Regarding specific external vibration conditions, a high frequency of external vibration can lead to a dramatic effect of each piezoelectric element’s capacitance on increasing electrical outputs, but also can reduce the benefit from adding more piezoelectric elements to produce higher electrical outputs. After optimizing this EHPS prototype by adding more piezoelectric elements with higher piezoelectric stress constant and improving the flexibility of conductive asphalt mixtures, the maximum electric power from the proposed EHPS can be increased from approximately 1.2 mW to 300 mW under a high frequency (30 Hz) external vibration. The levelized cost of electricity of this EHPS can be $19.15/kWh on a high-volume roadway within a 15-year service life.

介绍了一种新型的能量收集路面系统（EHPS）设计。该设计背后的基本概念是将沥青层转化为压电能量采集器，以在大型系统中收集耗散的车辆动能。此EHPS设计由两层导电沥青层和一层压电材料层组成。为了验证设计的可行性，这项正在进行的研究从理论上通过三自由度机电模型对EHPS进行了分析，并在实验室中对原型进行了实际测试。结果，在实验室中根据原型设计测得的电压输出与根据机电模型估算的电压输出相匹配。通过测试EHPS中几个组成部分对发电的影响，这项研究证实，使用更具弹性的导电沥青混合料并布置更多具有更高压电应力常数的压电元件可以增加EHPS的电输出。关于特定的外部振动条件，高频率的外部振动会导致每个压电元件的电容对增加的电输出产生显着影响，但也会降低添加更多的压电元件以产生更高的电输出所带来的好处。通过添加更多具有更高压电应力常数的压电元件并改善导电沥青混合物的柔韧性来优化该EHPS原型后，在高频（30 Hz）下，所提出的EHPS的最大功率可以从约1.2 mW增加到300 mW外部振动。