Energy Harvesting on Airport Pavements Traffic Dependent: A321 (Narrow-Body) Aircraft Case Study

Abstract

Research into novel methods for reducing greenhouse gas emissions is being carried out with the use of energy-harvesting systems. On road pavements, energy-harvesting technology has been successful in finding solutions and applications. This study discusses a solution for airport pavements that aims to produce electric energy from aircraft traffic. The new system is simulated in Simulink/MATLAB with all the components for producing technical data being provided by the manufacturers. The system is internally subdivided by simulating the aircraft in 3DOF and the energy harvesting in 1DOF. The energy-harvesting simulations achieved an energy density of up to 6.80 Wh/(m.vehicle) and a 24% conversion rate. This paper contributes to the exploration of solutions to enable energy-harvesting systems to be placed in airport pavements. These solutions are traffic dependent and require an innovative system to control the operation due to the specifications of airport pavements.