The transition of autonomous vehicles into fleets requires an advanced control system design that relies on continuous feedback from the tires. Smart tires enable continuous monitoring of dynamic parameters by combining strain sensing with traditional tire functions. Here, we provide breakthrough in this direction by demonstrating tire-integrated system that combines direct mask-less 3D printed strain gauges, flexible piezoelectric energy harvester for powering the sensors and secure wireless data transfer electronics, and machine learning for predictive data analysis. Ink of graphene based material was designed to directly print strain sensor for measuring tire-road interactions under varying driving speeds, normal load, and tire pressure. A secure wireless data transfer hardware powered by a piezoelectric patch is implemented to demonstrate self-powered sensing and wireless communication capability. Combined, this study significantly advances the design and fabrication of cost-effective smart tires by demonstrating practical self-powered wireless strain sensing capability.
- Award ID(s):
- 1650460
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10079086
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the ASME 2018 12th International Conference on Energy Sustainability ES2018 June 24-28, 2018, Lake Buena Vista, FL, USA
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
more » « less
Abstract -
more » « less
Abstract Piezoelectric transducers are widely employed in vibration control and energy harvesting. The effective electro-mechanical coupling of a piezoelectric system is related to the inherent capacitance of the piezoelectric transducer. It is known that passive vibration suppression through piezoelectric LC shunt can be enhanced with the integration of negative capacitance which however requires a power supply. This research focuses on the parametric investigation of a self-sustainable negative capacitance where the piezoelectric transducer is concurrently used in both vibration suppression and energy harvesting through LC shunt. The basic idea is to utilize the energy harvesting functionality of the piezoelectric transducer to aid the usage of negative capacitance in terms of power supply. Specifically, the power consumption and circuitry performance with respect to negative capacitance circuit design is analyzed thoroughly. Indeed, the net power generation is the difference between available power in the shunt circuit and the power consumption of the negative capacitance circuit. There exists complex tradeoffs between net power generation and the vibration suppression performance when we use different resistance values in the negative capacitance circuit. It is demonstrated through correlated analytical simulation and experimental study that the proper selection of the resistance values in the negative capacitance circuit can result in vibration suppression enhancement as well as improved net power generation, leading to a self-sustainable negative capacitance scheme.
-
more » « less
Abstract One of the environmental crises facing the world is pollution due to rubber auto tire destruction. The use of tires in vehicles consumes 6% of the world's energy and causes 5% of carbon dioxide emissions; it accounts for up to 10% of the microplastic pollution found in oceans. Here, a new rubber nanocomposite self‐assembled from hard and soft elastomer matrixes is designed: polybutadiene with its two hydroxy chain ends reacts with 4,4'‐diphenylmethane diisocyanate to form segmented polyurethane. This system first undergoes self‐assembly, forming well‐defined nanoscale hard domains distributed in the soft matrix. Then, cross‐linking between the soft segments is accomplished by a controlled radiation method, resulting in the double network elastomer (DN‐E). Remarkably, the DN‐E exhibits the lowest reported loss factor value at 60 °C. The index of energy dissipation in the rolling tire demonstrates a prominent reduction of 72%, accomplished with an 88% decrease in energy loss, and 85% less wear loss, as compared with best earlier reported commercial tires. These new double‐network materials open a new prospective for the design and fabrication of ultralow energy‐consumption and strong abrasion‐resistance elastomers, which establishes a milestone for the development of the next generation of green low‐pollution tires causing much less energy dissipation.
-
more » « less
Piezoelectric energy harvesting from ambient vibrations is well studied, but harvesting from quasi-static responses is not yet fully explored. The lack of attention is because quasi-static actions are much slower than the resonance frequency of piezoelectric oscillators to achieve optimal outputs; however, they can be a common mechanical energy resource: from large civil structure deformations to biomechanical motions. The recent advances in bio-micro-electro-mechanical systems and wireless sensor technologies are motivating the study of piezoelectric energy harvesting from quasi-static conditions for low-power budget devices. This article presents a new approach of using quasi-static deformations to generate electrical power through an axially compressed bilaterally constrained strip with an attached piezoelectric layer. A theoretical model was developed to predict the strain distribution of the strip’s buckled configuration for calculating the electrical energy generation. Results from an experimental investigation and finite element simulations are in good agreement with the theoretical study. Test results from a prototyped device showed that a peak output power of 1.33 μW/cm2was generated, which can adequately provide power supply for low-power budget devices. And a parametric study was also conducted to provide design guidance on selecting the dimensions of a device based on the external embedding structure.
-
Emerging flexible and stretchable devices open up novel and attractive applications beyond traditional rigid wearable devices. Since the small and flexible form-factor severely limits the battery capacity, energy harvesting (EH) stands out as a critical enabler of new devices. Despite increasing interest in recent years, the capacity of wearable energy harvesting remains unknown. Prior work analyzes the power generated by a single and typically rigid transducer. This choice limits the EH potential and undermines physical flexibility. Moreover, current results do not translate to total harvested energy over a given period, which is crucial from a developer perspective. In contrast, this paper explores the daily energy harvesting potential of combining flexible light and motion energy harvesters. It first presents a multi-modal energy harvesting system design whose inputs are flexible photo-voltaic cells and piezoelectric patches. We measure the generated power under various light intensity and gait speeds. Finally, we construct daily energy harvesting patterns of 9593 users by integrating our measurements with the activity data from the American Time Use Survey. Our results show that the proposed system can harvest on average 0. 6mAh @ 3. 6V per day.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- The DOI is not currently available.
