Nowadays, the automotive industry is paying more attention to autonomous vehicles; as a result, the importance of tire safety is increased. Since tires are the only contact between the vehicle and the road, monitoring the parameters such as tire pressure and temperature, friction between tire and road, and tire wear is essential to ensure vehicle safety. These parameters are monitored with the sensors embedded in intelligent tires. These sensors need electric power for operation. To provide the electric power for the intelligent tire sensors, piezoelectric energy harvesters (PEHs) can be used to harvest a part of tire deflection waste energy to provide electric power to the sensors.Two new shapes of piezoelectric energy harvester inspired from Cymbal piezoelectric energy harvester were designed. It has been proven that the Cymbal piezoelectric energy harvester is effective in vibration energy harvesting. Two new shapes are inspired by cymbal energy harvester, and they are developed to harvest strain energy from rolling tires. It is the first time this type of energy harvester based on the Cymbal geometry is used for the intelligent tire application. To ensure that these new designs will be safely and effectively embedded on the inner surface of tires, some modification on the shape, size, and design was made. The output voltage, power, and energy of the designed PEHs were evaluated through the developed Multiphysics model and experimental analysis. In order to run the experimental analysis, a wireless measurement system is developed. The PEH will be undergoing cyclic loading in the tire application. Therefore, the fatigue failure of the piezoelectric material is also considered in the design stage. The PEH is designed to be used in autonomous vehicles tire to provide power to the tire sensors. Due to this application, the PEH is subjected to temperature change, tire inflation changes, vehicle speed changes, and tire load changes due to this application. Therefore, in this study, some parametric analysis is done to investigate the effect of these changes on the PEH performance. The parametric study with the use of the COMSOL Multiphysics model is done. In this study, the effect of vehicle speed, PEH depth, piezoelectric material thickness, and temperature on the output of the PEH is investigated. The parametric experimental study is done to study the effect of tire inflation pressure and tire load on the output voltage of the PEH. The model output showed that the harvested energy from each new design is sufficient to power up several sensors in intelligent tires. These new designs showed several advantages, such as high performance and ease of manufacturing.
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