The future of tire energy: a novel one-end cap structure for sustainable energy harvesting

Abstract

Piezoelectric energy harvesting is gaining popularity as an eco-friendly solution to harvest energy from tire deformation for tire condition monitoring systems in vehicles. Traditional piezoelectric harvesters, such as cymbal and bridge structures, cannot be used inside tires due to their design limitations. The wider adoption of renewable energy sources into the energy system is increasing rapidly, reflecting a global attraction toward the utilization of sustainable power sources (Aljendy et al. in Int J Power Energy Convers 12(4): 314–337, 2021; Yesner et al. in Evaluation of a novel piezoelectric bridge transducer. In: 2017 Joint IEEE International Symposium on the Applications of Ferroelectric (ISAF)/International Workshop on Acoustic Transduction Materials and Devices (IWATMD)/Piezoresponse Force Microscopy (PFM). IEEE, 2017). The growing interest in capturing energy from tire deformation for Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems (TPMS) aligns with this trend, providing a promising and self-sustaining alternative to traditional battery-powered systems. This study presents a novel one-end cap tire strain piezoelectric energy harvester (TSPEH) that can be used efficiently and reliably inside a tire. The interaction between the tire and energy harvester was analyzed using a decoupled modeling approach, which showed that stress concentration occurred along the edge of the end cap. The TSPEH generated a maximum voltage of 768 V under 2 MPa of load, resulting in an energy output of 32.645 J/rev under 1 MPa. The computational findings of this study were consistent with previous experimental investigations, confirming the reliability of the numerical simulations. The results suggest that the one-end cap structure can be an effective energy harvester inside vehicle tires, providing a valuable solution for utilizing one-end cap structures in high-deformation environments such as vehicle tires.