Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Simulation And Control System Of A Railroad Track Power Harvesting Device, Kyle J. Phillips

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

With the vastness of existing railroad infrastructure, there exist numerous road crossings which are lacking warning light systems and/or crossing gates due to their remoteness from existing electrical infrastructure. Along with lacking warning light systems, these areas also tend to lack distributed sensor networks used for railroad track health monitoring applications. With the power consumption required by these systems being minimal, extending electrical infrastructure into these areas would not be an economical use of resources. This motivated the development of an energy harvesting solution for remote railroad deployment.

This thesis describes a computer simulation created to validate experimental on-track results …