Zack Anderson, a senior in electrical engineering and computer sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, helped create GenShock, seen here being installed on a Humvee.
The shock absorber system can partially power a car while smoothing the ride, and could lead to future hybrid technologies.
Photograph courtesy Donna Coveney/Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Published February 19, 2009
Drivers in pothole-plagued cities, rejoice: Researchers have invented a shock absorber that can partially power a car while smoothing the ride.
When a vehicle using the technology hits a small bump in the road, hydraulic fluid squirts into a turbine. The turbine then spins as fluid runs through it, powering a small electric generator.
The system, which could someday help power hybrid cars, is controlled by electronics that ensure a much smoother ride than normal shocks while simultaneously generating electricity for the car to use.
A team of mechanical engineers, led by Shakeel Avadhany at Boston's Levant Power Corporation, designed the system, which they've dubbed GenShock.
Road Test
The U.S. military will be the first to give GenShock a test drive.
Improved fuel efficiency would mean hauling less fuel through war zones. And a smoother ride would make handling safer, allowing soldiers to drive over rough terrain faster.
Levant is developing the regenerative shock absorber for the next-generation Humvee, then for the heavy-truck and consumer-hybrid markets, said Avadhany, an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
When installed on a 40-mile-per-gallon hybrid vehicle, the recovered energy can be used for fuel-efficiency gains between 3 percent and 10 percent. This is equivalent to up to a four-mile-per-gallon increase in fuel economy.
"Just as in the case of regenerative braking"—a technique used by some hybrid vehicles to generate electricity from energy released when a car brakes—"one could dump the extra energy in a battery instead of in the atmosphere," said Karl Hedrick, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the research.
"I don't know how significant this will be, but it sounds good."
Editor's note, February 21, 2009: The original version of this article referred to potential fuel-efficiency gains in a military Humvee. It has been corrected and now refers to gains in a 40-mile-per-gallon hybrid vehicle.
Latest News
Latest News
Recent Energy News
-
Pictures: Errant Shell Oil Rig Runs Aground Off Alaska
Crews have been trying to secure the drilling rig, which broke free of its tow lines in a storm and is carrying 150,000 gallons of fuel.
-
Wireless Power May Cut the Cord for Plug-In Devices, Including Cars
WiTricity, a company based near Boston, envisions a future where everything from mobile phones to vehicles can be charged without wires.
-
Pictures: Race Against Time to Build a New Tomb for Chernobyl
In an unprecedented engineering endeavor, workers are replacing the crumbling structure hastily erected to contain radiation at Chernobyl, site of the world's worst nuclear power disaster in 1986.
Advertisement
The Great Energy Challenge
-
Energy News and Perspective
Discover thought-provoking stories and conversation on the Energy Challenge Blog.
-
The 360° Energy Diet
Follow this plan to reduce your energy use, from using less fuel to changing what you eat.
-
Personal Energy Meter
See how you measure up, and find out how making simple changes at home can help.
ScienceBlogs Picks
Special Report: Shale Gas Rush
-
A Dream Dashed by the Rush on Gas
The shale gas industry maintains that it protects drinking water and land. But mistrust has been sown in rural communities.
-
New Jobs Through Energy
The industry promises jobs to a state badly in need of an economic boost, but the work so far isn't where you might expect it to be.
-
Mapping a Gas Boom
Track the growing mark that energy companies have etched on Pennsylvania since first producing natural gas from shale.
