Stepped Tread Web for Snow and Mud Grip
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing vehicle tires with profiled treads struggle to achieve a grip behavior that adapts effectively to muddy or snow-covered surfaces, as the current designs often compromise on traction and braking properties while trying to optimize other tire characteristics.
Innovation Solution
A pneumatic vehicle tire with a profiled tread featuring tread blocks aligned in the circumferential direction, separated by transverse grooves, where the web connecting the blocks has a stepped surface with varying radial extensions, allowing for enhanced snow or mud compaction and improved lateral guidance, adjusting grip based on surface conditions.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If tread block elements are connected by a simple web structure, then manufacturing is easier and structure is simpler, but grip behavior on snow and mud surfaces is insufficient
Solution Approach 1:
The web is segmented into multiple steps with different radial extension heights, creating distinct functional zones. Each step can independently interact with snow or mud at different depths, enabling the web to adapt to varying surface conditions without requiring multiple separate components.
Solution Approach 2:
The web transitions from a simple planar structure to a three-dimensional stepped structure with varying radial heights. This dimensional change allows different portions of the web to engage with the road surface at different levels, providing enhanced grip adaptation to snow and mud while maintaining structural integrity.
2Reliability
If the web is designed with high radial extension for snow compaction, then grip on deep snow improves, but the structure becomes more complex and harder to manufacture
Solution Approach 1:
The web is divided into multiple steps where only the highest step requires maximum radial extension for deep snow compaction, while lower steps provide progressive engagement. This segmentation allows the critical function to be achieved without requiring the entire web structure to be excessively complex.
Solution Approach 2:
Different portions of the web have different radial extension heights tailored to their specific functions. The most radially outward step provides the necessary height for snow compaction and grip, while other steps have reduced heights for lateral guidance and progressive engagement, optimizing performance without uniform complexity throughout.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The tire achieves better traction and braking properties on snowy, muddy, or slushy surfaces by compacting snow or mud with its stepped surface, automatically adjusting grip and lateral guidance according to the surface height, ensuring improved performance across varying conditions.
Implementation Method 1
The most radially outwardly extending step comes into effective contact with snow, mud or mud even at low heights of snow, mud or mud and compacts it so that additional snow-snow interlocking or mud-mud interlocking or respectively Mud-mud interlocking occurs
Implementation Method 2
additional snow-snow interlocking or mud-mud interlocking or respectively Mud-mud interlocking occurs, which is an important factor for grip on snow, mud or mud in order to achieve good traction and braking properties
Data Source
Figure 1
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AI summary
The tire has profiled running stripes with profile block row, which extends over a circumference of the vehicle pneumatic tire, and is aligned in a circumferential direction of the vehicle pneumatic tire. A bar (24) is designed at its side, which points radially outwards to a lateral surface of the vehicle tire, along an extension direction of a transverse groove (20) with a staged surface having stages (31,32,33,34) of different radial extension heights, which ends radially within the lateral surface of the tire.