Case Study: Siemens Corporate Technology optimizes piezoelectric energy harvesting for tire sensors with COMSOL Multiphysics

Siemens Corporate Technology optimizes tire energy harvester performance with Comsol at 2 key parameters

The customer, Siemens Corporate Technology, faced the challenge of designing a self-powered Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS) that could be placed inside a car tire. This required developing a piezoelectric energy harvester that was lightweight, durable enough to last the life of a tire, and capable of withstanding extreme centrifugal accelerations. To solve this, they worked with vendor Comsol and its COMSOL Multiphysics simulation software.

Using Comsol's software, Siemens was able to model the fluid-structure interaction of the harvester's cantilever beam to simulate its performance. This allowed them to optimize the design by investigating how different parameters, such as beam thickness and surrounding air pressure, affected the dampening of its deflection. As a result, Comsol's solution enabled Siemens to effectively prototype and optimize a battery-free MEMS generator for their innovative TPMS application.

Siemens Corporate Technology