Tire health monitoring using the intelligent tire concept

Tire durability plays an important role in road transportation safety. Damaged tires can cause vehicle instability and create potential traffic accidents. To study the potential of using the intelligent tire concept for health monitoring of the tire, a computational method for defect detection in tire structure was developed. Comparing the trend of acceleration signals for the undamaged and damaged tires can reveal information about the crack length and location around the tire circumference. To accomplish this, a finite element model of the intelligent tire was developed using implicit dynamic analysis. In addition, using the data from the model, a health monitoring algorithm was developed for predicting the crack locations using the acceleration signals obtained from the tri-axial accelerometer attached to the tire inner-liner. It is observed that the radial component of the acceleration signal plays a key role in defect detection in intelligent tires.