Converting Waste Vehicle Aerodynamic Energy into Electricity

With the number of vehicles traveling every year increasing, it is becoming more important to make every trip as efficient as possible. This leads to the question, is it possible to recover a fraction of the energy that vehicles use? This paper explores the winds produced by road vehicles traveling at high speeds and, by extension, the winds produced by high speed rail and the design of a device that successfully captures and converts this wind into usable electricity. ANSYS Fluent and Solidworks Flow Simulation were used to obtain the induced wind profiles of the vehicles. A novel small scale Savonius wind turbine was then designed and constructed around reasonable perimeters for this application and tested for efficiency. The results of the simulations and experimental testing are provided to prove the proposed wind energy harvesting concept has potential for commercial use.