Pneumatic tires are critical components in mobile systems that are widely used in our lives for passenger and
goods transportation. Wheel/ground interactions in these systems play an extremely important role for not only
system design and efficiency but also safe operation. However, fully understanding wheel/ground interactions
is challenging because of high complexity of such interactions and the lack of in situ sensors. In this paper, we
present the development of a tire tread deformation sensor and energy harvester for real-time tire monitoring and
control. Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) based micro-sensor is designed and fabricated to embed inside the tire
tread and to measure the tread deformation. We also present a cantilever array based energy harvester that takes
advantages of the mechanical bandpass filter concept. The harvester design is able to have a natural frequency
band that can be used to harvest energy from varying-frequency vibrational sources. The energy harvester
is also built using with new single crystal relaxor ferroelectric material (1 - &Vkgr;)Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-&Vkgr;PbTiO3 (PMN-PT) and interdigited (IDT) electrodes that can perform the energy conversion more efficiently. Some
preliminary experiment results show that the performance of the sensor and the energy harvester is promising.
Piezoelectric materials have been widely used in applications such as transducers, acoustic components, as well as
motion, pressure and airborne sensors. Because of the material's biocompatibility and flexibility, we have been able to
apply small piezoelectric sensors, made of PVDF, to cockroaches. We built a laboratory test system to study the
piezoelectric properties of a bending sensor. The tested motion was compared with that of the sensor attached to a
cockroach. Surface characterization and finite element analysis revealed the effects of microstructure on piezoelectric
response. The sensor attachment enables us to monitor the insects' locomotion and study their behaviors. The
applications of engineering materials to insects opens the door to innovating approaches to integrating biological,
mechanical and electrical systems.
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