Energy harvesting and speed sensing with a hybrid rotary generator for self-powered wireless monitoring

Real-time onboard health monitoring systems are critical for the railway industry to maintain high service quality and operational safety.However,the issue with power supplies for monitoring sensors persists,especially for freight trains that lack onboard power.Here,we propose a hybrid piezoelectric-triboelectric rotary generator(HPT-RG)for energy harvesting and vehicle speed sensing.The HPT-RG incorporates a rotational self-adaptive technique that softens the equivalent stiffness,enabling the piezoelectric non-resonant beam to surpass resonance limitations in a low-frequency region.The experiments demonstrate the feasibility of using the HPT-RG as an energy harvesting module to collect the rotational energy of the freight rail transport and power the wireless temperature sensors.To allow multiple monitoring in confined spaces on trains,a triboelectric sensing module is added to the HPT-RG to sense the operation speed and mileage of vehicles.Furthermore,the generator exhibits favorable mechanical durability under more than 600 h of official testing on the train bogie axle.The proposed HPT-RG is essential for creating a truly self-powered,maintenance-free,and zero-carbon onboard wireless monitoring system on freight railways.

An electromagnetic semi-active dynamic vibration absorber for thin-walled workpiece vibration suppression in mirror milling

As critical components of aircraft skins and rocket fuel storage tank shells,large thin-walled workpieces are susceptible to vibration and deformation during machining due to their weak local stiffness.To address these challenges,we propose a novel tunable electromagnetic semi-active dynamic vibration absorber(ESADVA),which integrates with a magnetic suction follower to form a followed ESADVA(follow-ESADVA)for mirror milling.This system combines a tunable magnet oscillator with a follower,enabling real-time vibration absorption and condition feedback throughout the milling process.Additionally,the device supports self-sensing and frequency adjustment by providing feedback to a linear actuator,which alters the distance between magnets.This resolves the traditional issue of being unable to directly monitor vibration at the machining point due to space constraints and tool interference.The frequency shift characteristics and vibration absorption performance are comprehensively investigated.Theoretical and experimental results demonstrate that the prototyped follow-ESADVA achieves frequency synchronization with the milling tool,resulting in a vibration suppression rate of approximately 47.57%.Moreover,the roughness of the machined surface decreases by18.95%,significantly enhancing the surface quality.The results of this work pave the way for higher-quality machined surfaces and a more stable mirror milling process.