An experimental application on energy harvesting with piezoelectric on asphalt pavements

With the dramatic increase in the world population, the demand for transportation and, accordingly, energy is also increasing. Clean and renewable energy sources are one of the most important research topics in all countries. The word piezo-electric that, means energy from pressure, is the ability of the material to change an electric field or electric potential as a result of mechanical pressure applied to some materials. This effect is directly related to the change in polarization density inside the material. If the material is not short-circuited, the applied loading and stress creates a voltage in the material. Energy production with materials that provide piezoelectric energy harvesting placed within asphalt pavements is one of the topics that road pavement engineers have been researching in recent years. In this study, experiments were made using different sensors to improve energy harvesting from asphalt pavements. The difference of this study from other studies was that different piezoelectric sensors were placed in the asphalt mixture samples and the measurements of the resulting voltages were made. The obtained results showed that this method is encouraging for energy harvesting and might be the answer for highway transport demand in the future.