Design of Rumble Strips with Embedded Piezoelectric Harvesting Device as a Source of Renewable Energy for Traffic Counting Detectors

This study focuses on designing a prototype of Rumble Strips with embedded Piezoelectric HarvestingDevices to collect energy from vehicle vibrations and power traffic counting detectors. The use of renewableenergy provides sustainability because of the number of benefits it provides and alleviates the use of fossils thatare commonly used to produce energy in households and public use. The rumble strips with piezoelectricharvesting devices are a combination of materials that provide two different benefits: alerting drivers tochanging traffic conditions and contributing energy through vehicle vibration utilizing piezoelectric devices.Previous studies have demonstrated that materials such as piezo-tiles, and road cement-based piezoelectrichave a substantial impact on energy generation and give an extensive amount of electricity. The designedthermoplastic rumble strips are as follows: base layer of primer, 2-mm thick of thermoplastic paint; after that,the Piezoelectric Harvesting Devices are installed; next, it is covered with 8-mm thick thermoplastic paint. Therumble strips are subjected to external factors, and the AASHTO T250-19, or Hardness Test, is performed. Thestudy shows that in laboratory, the rumble strips are classified as Extra Hard, yet in dry and wet conditions,they are categorized as Hard material, which satisfies the rumble strip requirements. After that, the VehicleEnergy harvesting where the researchers utilized six records using motorcycle, sedan, L300Van, andPatrol2004 that pass through the rumble strips to obtain average volts. The rumble strips with piezoelectricproduced a minimum average of 22.13-volts and maximum of 1036.57-volts, which are stored in the 3200-voltbattery and it shows capability to power the 5-volt camera in the study. The 5-volt and watts camera have acomputed operating time of 30.72-hours using the battery efficiency specifications. Overall, the design,classifications, and results in the voltage computations of the study were viable and effective.