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Under the skin: Tires that make their own electricity Car News

Falken’s parent company, Sumito Rubber Industries, worked with Professor Hiroshi Tani of Kansai University to develop an electronic device to accurately monitor tire wear.

Despite all the talk about the need for driverless cars to reduce the accident rate, it seems that there is still a lot to be done to improve the safety of conventional cars. Tire condition is essential for safe driving, but it’s fair to say that for many drivers, actively checking tires is pretty low on the priority list. If tire wear goes unnoticed or ignored, the results can be deadly, especially in the wet.

Continental has already demonstrated under controlled test conditions at the MIRA Proving Ground near Nuneaton that despite the legal limit of 1.6mm over 75% of the tread width, wet stopping distances significantly increase a once tire wear drops below 3 mm.

Sumito’s new device, the Energy Harvester, does not require batteries. Instead, a tiny linked system inside the tire generates static electricity to power an equally small tire sensor, which can transmit a data signal to the car’s electronic systems using BLE. (Bluetooth Low Energy). Inside the Energy Harvester are two layers of rubber coated with a film, creating a negative and positive electrode.

When the tire deforms, the two films rub against each other, generating static electricity. A set of Harvesters are arranged in a line inside the tire carcass, and as the tire rolls along the road, each generates a small voltage. The changing shape of the voltage waveform between them indicates the change in tire footprint as the tire wears.

The system could be integrated into tires intended for conventional cars, communicating with the vehicle’s instrumentation system to warn of excessively worn tires. Working in conjunction with the vehicle’s Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems (TPMS), it seems logical that combining the two could provide a much more efficient way of keeping tabs on all aspects of a tire’s condition. on behalf of the driver. If and when driverless cars are free on the roads, a tire wear monitoring system along with the TPMS could be a useful tool for fleet operators and private owners.

The research was originally part of Sumito’s Smart Tire Concept, which received funding in 2019 from the Japan Science & Technology Agency. The concept aims to transform complete tires into sensors. Other tire manufacturers, including Continental and Goodyear, have also been working on smart tire concepts for several years.

Continental’s Sidewall Torsion Sensor (SWT), first seen a few years ago, was designed to integrate with braking systems to improve braking stability. Because it could detect vehicle yaw at source rather than after it was in progress, it was also hoped that SWT might one day remove a vehicle yaw sensor, the most expensive part of an ESP system. .

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Source: www.autocar.co.uk
This notice was published: 2022-05-08 23:01:25

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