Research Themes: Energy and Climate Change, Acoustics and Signal processing and Control. 

Much of the harvestable mechanical energy around us (e.g., vehicle's vibrations, marine waves, bridge motion, etc.) is irregular and oscillatory. On the other hand, energy harvesting works best with regular, unidirectional motion. To address this problem, a novel energy harvester that converts irregular, oscillatory motion into regular, unidirectional motion has been developed. Amongst its many applications, this type of energy harvester can be used in regenerative shock absorbers, which have the potential to save drivers millions of pounds per year in fuel costs.

An energy harvesting shock absorber is capable of recovering the vibrational energy that is generally dissipated in the suspension while simultaneously suppressing the induced vibration to the body of a vehicle. It can therefore work as an adjustable damper as well as an energy generator. In this project, an innovative regenerative shock absorber will be incorporated into the suspension of a car with the aim of reducing the impact forces caused by base excitation and simultaneously storing the resulting scavenged energy. The key component is a novel and compact motion rectifier that can convert the oscillatory vibration into unidirectional rotation of a generator. An energy harvester design based on this motion rectifier can be used for many other applications such as buildings, bridges, marine environment, railway tracks and even MEMS devices. In this project, a small scale prototype will be designed and built to demonstrate the proposed concept. Also, a series of tests on a quarter-car suspension will be carried out to verify theoretical predictions.

If you wish to discuss any details of the project informally, please contact Dr Mohamed M. Torbati, Electromechanical research group, Email: m.m.torbati<στο>soton.ac.uk, Tel: +44 (0) 2380 59 8583.