Abstract This paper describes a research activity concerning the design and the development of an energy harvesting system integrated in a pneumatic spring for railway application to recover otherwise wasted energy sources from the train suspension vibration. The final scope of this research is to harvest energy and create a self-powered smart component capable of supplying useful information for the monitoring and the diagnostics of a vehicle or its subsystems. Starting from a common air spring for a metropolitan train application, the boundary volume of the new device was defined by means of reverse engineering techniques. Exploiting commercial component, two alternative transduction mechanisms were evaluated to select the best one in terms of flexibility and functionality. The defined concept design was thus modelled and optimized by means of a multi-physical approach. The reiterative optimization process, based on the use of a specific cost function, led to define the optimized device layout. The effectiveness of the proposed device, in terms of power generation, was evaluated realizing a physical prototype and a test rig. The results of the experimental tests validated the design process.

中文翻译：

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集成在气动悬架中的能量收集系统的设计和多物理场优化

摘要 本文描述了一项研究活动，该研究活动涉及集成在气动弹簧中的能量收集系统的设计和开发，用于铁路应用，以从列车悬架振动中回收浪费的能源。这项研究的最终范围是收集能量并创建一个能够为车辆或其子系统的监控和诊断提供有用信息的自供电智能组件。从用于城市列车应用的普通空气弹簧开始，新设备的边界体积是通过逆向工程技术定义的。利用商业组件，评估了两种替代转导机制，以选择在灵活性和功能性方面最好的一种。因此，通过多物理方法对定义的概念设计进行建模和优化。基于使用特定成本函数的反复优化过程导致定义优化的设备布局。所提出的设备在发电方面的有效性通过实现物理原型和测试台进行了评估。实验测试的结果验证了设计过程。