Asymmetric Pneumatic Tire Tread for Ice Cornering Stability
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional winter tires with symmetric tread patterns fail to adequately enhance cornering performance on ice and snow, despite improving ice and snow performance and drainage, as they do not consider the actual ground contact state when mounted on a vehicle.
Innovation Solution
A pneumatic tire design featuring a center row of land portions with alternately arranged inclined lateral grooves and a circumferential sub groove, positioned outside the equatorial plane, and a varying number of blocks relative to other rows, to enhance cornering performance by stabilizing traction and braking on ice and snow.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a symmetric tread pattern is used to enhance ice and snow performance, then drainage performance is improved, but cornering performance deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies asymmetry by positioning the center row of land portions with inclined lateral grooves outside the equatorial plane of the tire. This asymmetric arrangement creates different contact characteristics on the inner and outer sides of the tire, enabling improved cornering performance while maintaining straight-line stability and ice/snow performance. The asymmetric design allows the tire to better adapt to the actual ground contact state during cornering maneuvers.
2Ease of manufacture
If conventional symmetric tread patterns are used, then manufacturing is simplified, but actual ground contact state is not optimized
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by creating different tread characteristics in different regions of the tire. The center row of land portions with inclined lateral grooves is positioned asymmetrically outside the equatorial plane, while other rows maintain conventional symmetric block patterns. This allows the tire to have optimized ground contact properties where needed (in the center row for cornering) while maintaining simplicity in other areas.
Data Source
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
AI summary
Pneumatic tire with enhanced ice performance, snow performance, hydroplaning resistance and slush snow performance. The pneumatic tire has plural land portions formed by demarcation by plural circumferential grooves extending along a tire circumferential direction and plural widthwise grooves extending along a tire widthwise direction. The circumferential groove is composed of one circumferential major groove in broad width, and plural number of circumferential sub grooves in narrow width. The width of the circumferential sub groove is less than 60% of that of the circumferential major groove. The sum of the width of the circumferential sub grooves is smaller than that of the circumferential major groove