A mathematical model for piezoelectric ring energy harvesting technology from vehicle tires

A theoretical model for a dual-mass piezoelectric ring tire harvester is developed by an iteration method to determine the energy harvested from excitations of vehicle tires by rough roads. The piezoelectric ring harvester is made of a series of discrete PZT4 patches in a square shape circumferentially embedded in a polymer ring evenly. The harvester is placed between two the steel belts tightly pasted in the inner liner of tires for the harvesting process. The influences of some practical considerations, such as the central angle θ of the tire sector to measure the contact section of a tire, the width of patches, the number of piezoelectric patches in the direction of the tire width, the thickness of patches, the radius of the piezoelectric ring, the speed of a vehicle and the road roughness, on the root mean square of the generated electric power are discussed. The results show that a power up to 42.08 W can be realized from a harvester with the central angle of θ, the radius of the piezoelectric ring, the width, the thickness, and the number of the PZT4 patch in the direction of the tire width being 30°, 0.25 m, 0.01 m, 0.01 m and 3, respectively. The research on the theoretical model develops a novel technique for an efficient and practical energy harvesting from vehicle tires.