Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting from Vehicle Wheels

Abstract

Since the advent of modern civilisation, humans have always being depended upon the fossil fuels as the source of energy for their daily requirements. With the exponential growth in the population, the dependence on these conventional sources for the daily energy requirements has led to the depletion of the same and adverse ill-effects on the environment. To lessen the burden and if possible minimise to zero, energy harvesting has become the need of the hour and the development of the different energy harvesting technologies has been the prime area of research. Of them, piezoelectric materials have gained the popularity in this niche of energy harvesting solutions and have resulted in promising possibilities of efficient tapping of waste energy for future use. In this paper, a technique of application of piezoelectric material for harnessing energy i.e. along the circumference of the inner lining of the tyre and rough calculations has been made to project the probable energy tapped and its usage. The current work describes a sample arrangement of crystal and various new arrangements based on maximum power output can be made.