On road tire deformation measurement system using a capacitive-resistive sensor

This paper presents a novel approach to continuously measure the mechanical deformations of a tire due to contact with asphalt, by embedding capacitive-resistive sensors on it. A strain monitoring method is proposed, that adopts the tire itself as a sensing element. In this way, the sensing area is pushed towards the tread interface (the part of the tire in direct contact with the asphalt) where the information concerning tire state is actually generated. Tire deformation causes a change of the spacing between the steel wires inside the tire carcass and this change is translated into an impedance change of that region of the tire. By measuring such an impedance change, our approach enables to determine the deformation of the tire. Experimental results supports the feasibility of our approach and are reported and discussed in this paper.