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International Journal of Pavement Research and Technology 11 (2018) 168–175
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A preliminary study on the highway piezoelectric power supply system

Hailu Yang a, Linbing Wang b,⇑, Bin Zhou c, Ya Wei d, Qian Zhao e
a
National Center for Materials Service Safety, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China
b
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Tech, USA
c
Yunnan Research Institute of Highway Science and Technology, Kunming 650000, China
d
Department of Civil Engineering, Tsinghua University, China
e
National Center for Materials Service Safety, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, China

Received 9 September 2016; received in revised form 23 August 2017; accepted 25 August 2017
Available online 9 September 2017

Abstract

Pavement piezoelectric energy harvesting technique is to use a Piezoelectric Energy Harvester (PEH) to convert the mechanical energy
of vehicles into electrical energy. A lot of research has been done on the technology of piezoelectric energy collection, but it is mainly
focused on the theoretical model and the laboratory tests and lacks the on-site performance evaluation. In this paper, a stacked array
type PEH is designed with protection package, which can improve the performance and the service life of the PEH. The demonstration
project is also carried out to test the field performance. It is found that under the actual vehicle loading, the obtained piezoelectric energy
can successfully light LED signs.
Ó 2018 Chinese Society of Pavement Engineering. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND
license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Keywords: PEH energy harvester; Energy collection; Sustainable development; Engineering application; Actual axle load

1. Introduction through for energy conservation and emission reduction

The transportation systems require a considerable
amount of energy to maintain their regular operations.
With the rapid development of society, the increasing
energy consumption leads to the shortage of non-
renewable energy resources. To solve this problem, many
countries pay attention to the collection and use of renew-
able energy. Pavement will bear millions of times of the
axle loadings from traveling vehicles in its service life,
resulting in deformation and vibration. Great mechanical
energy is wasted during this process. It will be a break-
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: yanghailu888@126.com (H. Yang), wangl@vt.edu
(L. Wang), zhoubin236@126.com (B. Zhou), yawei@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn
(Y. Wei), zhaoqian928@xs.ustb.edu.cn (Q. Zhao).
Peer review under responsibility of Chinese Society of Pavement
Engineering.
if the mechanical vibration energy is transformed into elec-
tric energy.
The piezoelectric energy harvesting technology has been
studied for many years. Priya (2005) invented a pocket
piezoelectric windmill which was attached to a rotating
cam [1]. When the cam rotates, the motivated piezoelectric
material will convert the mechanical energy into electric
energy. Alexander et al. (2010) developed a system to col-
lect vibration energy generated by pedestrians walking on
the roads [2]. Yoshiyasu (2008) developed an energy collec-
tion device which was embedded in the pavement [3]. It had
been tested at subway entrance, shopping malls, etc. An
Israel company INNOWATTECH (2010) announced that
they had developed a pavement energy harvesting systems:
Innowattech Piezo Electric Generator (IPEG), which is
based on a piezoelectric transducer. According to reports,
when traffic volume of vehicles is more than 500 in the

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijprt.2017.08.006
1996-6814/Ó 2018 Chinese Society of Pavement Engineering. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
 H. Yang et al. / International Journal of Pavement Research and Technology 11 (2018) 168–175
single lane per hour, up to 250 kW of electrical energy can
be collected per kilometer per lane [4].
Guan et al. (2010) studied the cement-based piezoelec-
tric materials for road power generation, where the
cement-based piezoelectric composites are manufactured
by pre-embedding piezoelectric ceramics [5]. Zhao et al.
(2011) designed the piezoelectric materials using the finite
element analysis [6]. Xiong et al. (2012) show that the pave-
ment deformation by vehicle processing and the vibration
caused by moving vehicles on the road can be used for
the collection of electric energy, and the best power acqui-
sition system is discussed in the study [7]. Xiang et al.
(2013) considered the piezoelectric road model as the Ber-
noulli–Euler beam model with pavement damping [8].
Yuan et al. (2014) studied the use of piezoelectric transduc-
ers in the collection of track vibration energy for railway
safety driving and found that the piezoelectric energy har-
vester could generate 30 mW power [9]. Zhang et al. (2014)
studied the performance of a concrete-piezoelectric can-
tilever beam transducer in a single vehicle using ANSYS
simulation [10].
In all, most of the research on the piezoelectric harvest-
ing technology in pavement engineering is still in the
exploratory stage. Although the previous studies have con-
ducted preliminary theoretical analysis and laboratory
tests, lack of engineering practice still limits the promotion
of this new innovative green technology. In this paper, the
stacked array piezoelectric energy harvester (PEH) is
applied to the actual road and its performance is tested.
2. Design of PEH for asphalt pavement
Since the PEH will be loaded millions or even billions of
times during the service period, the PEH must have good
compressive ability, fatigue resistance, waterproof and
anti-corrosion performance. There have been many
researches done in pavement materials’ area but few about
PEHs [11,12]. In this study, the PEHs were prefabricated
and embedded in the pavement of a test site. Considering
the contact area of tires, the PEH was designed to be
30 cm wide and 30 cm long. PEHs in such dimension will
have better contact with the wheels of traveling vehicles.
The thickness of the PEH is 8 cm, which is slightly thinner
than the surface layer of the pavement from test site (9–
10 cm). The PEH consists of 12 piezoelectric units, an inter-
nal rectification circuit, and two power output cables.
Other than a rectangular PEH, a circular PEH was also
fabricated with a diameter of 30 cm and a height of 8 cm,
containing 12 piezoelectric units.
The PEH consists of four parts: the piezoelectric units,
the packaging materials, the internal circuit boards and
other sealing fastening components. The inner structure
of the PEH is shown in Fig. 1.
The core component of the PEHs is piezoelectric mate-
rial. This study adopted piezoelectric ceramics PZT-5H
(produced by Baoding Hengsheng Acoustics Electric
Apparatus Co., Ltd). For each unit, three PZT-5H slices
169
are stacked together and connected in parallel (c.f.
Fig. 2). The dimension of the piezoelectric unit size is
U20  23.2 mm.
Nylon (model: PA66 with 30% glass fiber) is selected to
be the protective packaging material of the piezoelectric
energy harvester. It has high strength, high load resistance,
high toughness and high resistance to repeated shocks. The
protection structure contains three layers: the upper, the
middle and the lower layer. The upper layer directly under-
took the vehicle load and the lower supported with the
ground reaction force. The middle layer reserved the holes
for 12 piezoelectric units and desiccant positioning, and
grooves for wires and the internal circuit board (as shown
in Fig. 3).
After connecting each of the piezoelectric units to the
circuit board, the power output will be rectified and
extracted by the cable. The rectifier bridge is sealed with
electronic glue to prevent the short circuit caused by water
leakage. The sealing methods were as follows: applying sil-
icone gasket between the upper and the lower encapsula-
tion structure; putting the stainless steel gasket with a
diameter of 40 between piezoelectric materials and wrap-
ping it using protection package, to prevent stress concen-
tration. Therefore, the piezoelectric energy harvester has
good compression performance, fatigue resistance and
waterproof performance.
The LED demonstration board (Fig. 4) consists of four
Chinese characters, meaning ‘‘piezoelectric demonstra-
tion,” which adopted the high power LED yellow lamp
bead with condenser cover. The working voltage of LED
lamp bead is 3 V, and the working current is 10 mA. Each
character on the board is organized with different numbers
of lights’ series, respectively, 41 lights’ series, 50 lights’ ser-
ies, 40 lights’ series, 50 lights’ series. There are a total of 181
lamp beads, and the working voltage of each character was
123 V, 150 V, 120 V, and 150 V respectively. Every charac-
ter had two power supply lines, one for the positive and the
other for the negative. There are eight wire lines in total,
and all of the cables are connected to the output of the
PEH through the connection chamber.
3. Demonstration project
The demonstration project of our piezoelectric power
supply system is located at K90 + 700 of Ma-Zhao High-
way near Zhaotong City, Yunnan Province, where the total
length of trial pavement section is about 50 m. 20 fabri-
cated PEHs are installed in real pavement, including 10
rectangular and 10 circular ones. Ma-Zhao Highway is a
two-direction six-lane highway. PEHs are installed in the
main lane near the emergency lane and along the wheel
path of the vehicles. The layout of the installation is illus-
trated in Fig. 5. To reduce the damage from road construc-
tion, the spacing is 2.5 m between two PEHs along the road
and the horizontal spacing is 1.875 m, which is consistent
with the axle structure of trailer trucks. A cable room is
built in the middle position of the demonstration road.
170 H. Yang et al. / International Journal of Pavement Research and Technology 11 (2018) 168–175

Fig. 1. The inner structure of the PEH.

Fig. 2. The piezoelectric unit.

Fig. 3. Diagram of the protective middle layer.

The output wires of PEHs and the input wires of the LED
board are connected in the cable room. The LED board is Fig. 4. The LED board.
located at the end of the test section, 30 m from the nearest
PEH.
PEH installation process includes the following steps (as cutting road surface, core-taking, dressing pit, installing
shown in Fig. 6): determining the position of each PEH, the PEH, laying the cable and filling the seam.
 H. Yang et al. / International Journal of Pavement Research and Technology 11 (2018) 168–175 171

Fig. 5. The schematic diagram of PEH laying.

Fig. 6. The installation process of the PEH.

There are three coordinate positioning methods to
determine the positions of the PEHs. During the process
of pavement construction, the positions of PEH have been
determined, and the coordinates have been recorded. The
positions are marked to make core-taking process easier.
The first step is to find the location according to the
recorded coordinates. The second step is to cut the pave-
ment open using cutting machine. The pits for the PEHs
and the slots for the wires are cut in this step. The third step
is to take out the asphalt concrete core. The bottom is flat-
tened to make sure the distance between the bottom and
the road surface is equal to the thickness of the PEH in
the fourth step. The fifth step is to install the PEHs. Before
filling the pit, it is necessary to make sure the pit is clean
172 H. Yang et al. / International Journal of Pavement Research and Technology 11 (2018) 168–175

Fig. 7. The open circuit voltage curves of F2 and Y10 at different speeds.
 H. Yang et al. / International Journal of Pavement Research and Technology 11 (2018) 168–175 173

and dry. The sixth step is to place the wires of the PEHs
along the slots. Then fill the seam with the modified asphalt
mixed with diatomite.

4. Field test

Toyota Highlander SUV was used in the test to apply

Fig. 8. The open circuit peak voltage of F2 and Y10 at different speeds.
load on the PEHs at the wheel speed of 20 km/h, 40 km/
h, 60 km/h, and 80 km/h, respectively. The weight of the
vehicle is 1.8 tons, the axle load is 4.5 kN and the tire pres-
sure is 0.7 MPa. The oscilloscope was used to monitor the
open circuit voltage of two PEHs (the serial numbers are
F2 and Y10). The two peak values at each speed were mea-
sured, and the average value is taken. The open circuit peak
voltages of F2 and Y10 are shown in Figs. 7 and 8. In the

Fig. 9. Each PEH corresponding LED Characters.

Fig. 10. Wiring Diagram of PEH power supply.

174 H. Yang et al. / International Journal of Pavement Research and Technology 11 (2018) 168–175
Fig. 11. SUV passed through the demonstration road.
Fig. 12. LED lights were lit by PEH devices.
images of Fig. 7, the x-axis is time (unit: 1 s/div) and y-axis
is the voltage (unit: 50 V/div).
As the speed of vehicle increases, the open circuit volt-
age of embedded PEHs will rise, and more electric energy
is produced. In addition, the influence of speed on the gen-
erated power of PEH is greater at a low speed. In Fig. 8,
the main reason for the difference between the two curves
is that the geometry of piezoelectric energy harvesters
No. F2 is different with the No. Y10. The cross section
of F2 is square and Y10 is circular, so when the load passes
from the pavement to the piezoelectric energy harvester,
the loading process of the piezoelectric energy harvester
is different. The loading of circular piezoelectric energy har-
vesters varies more gently and then the peak voltage of Y10
is lower than F2.
The open circuit voltage ranges between 250 and 400 V
when the Toyota Highlander SUV passes the embedded
PEHs at the speed between 20 km/h and 80 km/h which
are good enough to be the power supply of the LED board.
Twenty PEH devices were embedded in demonstration
project. The open circuit voltage of each PEH device meets
the operating voltage of LED characters and supply power
for one character. Methods of connecting wire between
PEH device and LED Chinese character are shown in
Figs. 9 and 10.
As shown in Fig. 11, when the vehicle passes through the
demonstration road, the LED Chinese character which is
connected to the corresponding PEH device will be lit
(see Fig. 12). The four LED characters are alternately
flashing during the vehicles pass over the demonstration
road. The time duration of LED bulbs being lit depends
on the vehicle speed (less time indicates faster speed).
Besides, LED brightness is affected by vehicle speed and
wheel load. The LED will be lit and brighter with higher
speed and loading.
5. Conclusions
In this paper, a PEH is developed to convert the
mechanical energy wasted by traveling vehicles into electric
energy. The PEHs were installed in the pavement of a test
site, and the performance of the PEH was evaluated under
the real traffic loading. The PEH had an excellent power
generating performance. The open circuit voltage gener-
ated from the PEH under the actual road traffic conditions
was higher than 250 V. The output voltage was sensitive to
the vehicle speed and increases with the increase in speed.
The electric energy produced by the PEH could be supplied
to the LED lamp, which could solve the problem of high
cost of power supply system for the mountain highway.
The energy collected by the PEH was derived from the
passed vehicles, and the electric energy was ultimately sup-
plied to the road facilities, which was in accordance with
the concept of sustainable development.
Acknowledgement
The research performed in this paper is supported by
technology project (NO. 2014318791080) from Ministry
of communications and transportation of the People’s
Republic of China.
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