Roads Wind Energy Harvesting Design and Analysis Using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)

Road energy capture has been a popular topic recently due to the need of a clean energy solution due to climate change and due to the untapped power generation potential of road traffic. However, the technology of road energy capture is still underdeveloped and most works that have been done focused more on larger vehicles such as lorries, buses, and trains. The objective of this study is to investigate the effects of car traffic configurations on the potential wind power harvesting of a road wind power harvester. This was done by running a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of 4 different traffic cases with sedan car traffic. The cases are single car, two cars side-by-side, two cars in a single lane, and four cars with two rows of side-by-side cars. The simulation was done using the software Ansys and the car speed was set at 25m/s. The results of the simulation have shown that the configuration have a huge impact on the wind induced velocity where side-by-side cars can increase the induced velocity and delay the distance where induced velocity breakdown occurs. The results also shown that the presence of a rear vehicle can dramatically change the pattern of the induced velocity and increases the magnitude of the induce velocity as well as the harvested wind power. From the results, it was determined that the best location for the wing power harvester is on the side of the road that is 2m away from the body of the car. The results form this study can be used to inform the design on a roadside wind energy harvester of capture solution.