A Rainbow Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting System for Intelligent Tire Monitoring Applications

Abstract

Intelligent tires can be used in autonomous vehicles to insure the vehicle safety by monitoring the tire and tire-road conditions using sensors embedded on the tire. These sensors and their wireless communication systems need to be powered by energy sources such as batteries or energy harvesters. The deflection of tires during rotation is an available and reliable source of energy for electric power generation using piezoelectric energy harvesters to feed tire self-powered sensors and their wireless communication systems. The aim of this study is to design, analyze, and optimize a rainbow-shaped piezoelectric energy harvester mounted on the inner layer of a pneumatic tire for providing enough power for microelectronics devices required for monitoring intelligent tires. It is shown that the designed piezoelectric energy harvester can generate sufficient voltage, power, and energy required for a tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS) with high data transmission speed or three TPMSs with average data transmission speed. The effect of the vehicle speed on the voltage and electric energy generated by the designed piezoelectric is also studied. The geometry and the circuit load resistance of the piezoelectric energy harvester are optimized in order to increase the energy harvesting efficiency. It is shown that the optimized rainbow piezoelectric energy harvester can reach the highest power generation among all the strain-based energy harvesters that partially cover the inner layer of the tire.

Design, modeling, and analysis of a high performance piezoelectric energy harvester for intelligent tires

“…In addition, the 42 kΩ is a large load resistance, and in reality, the TPMS may have much lower equivalent load impedance. Authors in their previous research on strain‐based PEHs showed that the output power is decreased significantly by decrease in the load resistance . Thus, by using smaller load resistance, the 6.5‐mW output power is not achievable.…”

“…For tire applications strain‐based energy harvesters create a favorable scenario considering the given constraints stated above. Drawbacks of using vibration‐based PEHs and advantages of strain‐based energy harvesters for the tire application are discussed by Esmaeeli et al. Starting from Apollo project in 2005, several strain‐based PEH were studied for tire applications .…”

“…Bowen and Arafa reviewed the PEHs used for powering up the TPMS for tire applications and reported the power output of the strain‐based PEHs is in between 40 μW and 6.5 mW . Authors also introduced a strain‐based rainbow PEH with power output of 5.85 mW . It is obvious that the output power of the strain‐based PEHs is significantly higher than that of the vibration‐based technology used for tires.…”

Cylinder‐based hybrid rotary nanogenerator for harvesting rotational energy from axles and self‐powered tire pressure monitoring

“…[30][31][32][33][34][35][36] The first tire pressure monitoring system operates by comparing rotation rates of four wheels. [30][31][32][33][34][35][36] The first tire pressure monitoring system operates by comparing rotation rates of four wheels.…”

“…Aimed at providing advanced sensing information and control technologies related to different transportation modes and even vehicle monitoring, the tire pressure monitor is deemed one of the three major safety systems in automobiles. [30][31][32][33][34][35][36] The first tire pressure monitoring system operates by comparing rotation rates of four wheels. Once one of the wheels differs from others in rate, the trip-computer system will give an alarm.…”