Energy Harvesting for Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems

Tire pressure monitoring systems (TPMSs) predict over- and underinflated tires, and warn the driver in critical situations. Today, battery powered TPMSs suffer from limited energy. New sensor features such as friction determination or aquaplaning detection require even more energy and would significantly decrease the TPMS lifetime. Harvesting electrical energy inside the tire of a vehicle has been considered as a promising alternative to overcome the limited lifetime of a battery. However, it is a real challenge to design a system, that generates electrical energy at low velocities while being robust at 200 km/h where radial accelerations up to 20000 m/s2 occur. This work focusses on developing different electromechanical energy transducers that meet the high requirements of the automotive sector. Different approaches are addressed on how the change of acceleration and strain within the tire can be used to provide mechanical energy to the energy harvester. The energy harvester converts the mechanical energy into electrical energy. In this thesis, piezoelectric and electromagnetic transducers are discussed in depth, modelled as electromechanical networks. Since the transducers provide energy in the form of an AC voltage, but sensors require a DC voltage, various common interface circuits are compared, using LTspice and applying method of the stochastic signal analysis. Furthermore, a buck-boost converter concept for the electromagnetic energy harvester is optimized and improved. Experiments on a tire test rig validate the theoretically determined output and confirm that well designed energy harvesters in the tire can generate much more energy than required by an TPMS not only at high velocities but also at velocities as low as 20 km/h