Development of a piezoelectric energy harvesting system for implementing wireless sensors on the tires

The need for energy harvesting technology is steadily growing in the field of self-powered wireless sensor systems for intelligent tires. The purpose of this study is to mount an energy harvester inside the tire. In order to achieve this, we focus on a stable energy source almost independent of vehicle speed. It is ascertained that the use of a strain field is suitable for this purpose. In order to develop the energy harvester for the tire, modeling of tire behavior has been performed and verified through comparing with experimental results. From the results, a piezoelectric energy harvester generates 380.2 mu j per revolution under 500 kgf load and 60 km/h. A self-powered wireless sensor system is manufactured for application and tested during vehicle driving. The result of this study presents 1.37 mu W/mm(3) of power generation from the performance of the energy harvester. This study concludes that the system is applicable to wireless tire sensor systems after making minor improvements. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.