Wind energy harvesting in civil engineering systems

Energy harvesting (EH), i.e. the process of extracting energy from the environment or from a surrounding system and converting it to useable electrical energy has many promising applications nowadays in the civil engineering field. Its areas of application currently focus mostly to powering small autonomous wireless sensors (thus eliminating the need for wires), while more recently proposals have been made concerning higher power energy harvesting devices, in the upward trend of renewable energy growth. This paper provides a taxonomy of EH and focuses on wind as a specific energy source, providing a literature review together with an application of wind EH using proper piezoelectric devices on a civil infrastructure (a suspension bridge).