Experimental Investigation and Forecasting of Power Generation from Speed Breakers or Road Ramps

The presented work is meant for producing electrical power from the speed breakers or road ramps. Road ramps are generally installed for controlling the speed of the traffic on the highways or near the squares. The kinetic energy of the vehicle is being dissipated into heat because of speed breakers or ramp (i.e. through the braking system). The power generation unit attached with ramp at this point converts the kinetic energy of the vehicle into useful power.

Investigations have been made by fabricating the model of a ramp to generate electrical power by cyclic application and removal of loads. The analysis has been made for different loads ranging from 1 kg to 20 kg. The loads have been applied for different frequencies over the ramp. The data have been collected and then presented in the form of tables and charts which reveal that output power increases with the traffic load. Finally a model has been produced for forecasting the output power from power ramp. The forecasting has been made for 25000 daily traffic movements (in both directions). It has been estimated that about 10 kw of electricity can be produced by installing such type of power ramp.