An H-shaped coupler energy harvester for application in heavy railways

The lack of onboard power supply for the sensors used for freight trailer safety monitoring. This paper proposes an H-shaped coupler energy harvester (HC-EH) for applications in heavy railways. The HC-EH is mainly divided into three modules: vibration input, motion conversion and energy conversion. When the train is in normal form, the adjacent couplers have relative motion used to excite the HC-EH through the vibration input module. Then the bidirectional reciprocations are converted into unidirectional rotations by the motion conversion module. The damage to the mechanical structure caused by the huge impact force between the couplings on the heavy railway is solved by the H-type structure with a parallel distribution of input and transmission utilized by the HC-EH. A generator converts kinetic energy into electricity stored in supercapacitors in the energy conversion module and provides power for the railway onboard monitoring sensor network. The system dynamics, performance and mechanical properties of full-scale prototypes were studied using mechanical testing and sensing fixtures. In the bench test, the peak and average output power were 9.67 W, and 5.14 W, respectively, and the peak efficiency was 56.49%. Finally, the practical applications of the proposed HC-EH in Datong-Qinhuangdao Railway are studied.