Pneumatic Tire Chamfered Block Corners Drainage
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional pneumatic tire designs that increase the volume of the main groove or adjust the slant angle to improve drainability compromise braking performance on dry and icy/snowy surfaces, controllability, and stability, making it difficult to achieve good performance across all conditions simultaneously.
Innovation Solution
The tire features a chamfered portion at specific corners of the blocks to suppress water turbulence, enhancing drainage without reducing the actual ground contact area, thereby improving drainability while maintaining running performance on dry surfaces.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If the volume of the main groove is increased to improve drainability, then water drainage performance is improved, but the ground contact area is reduced which deteriorates braking performance on dry road surface, braking performance on icy/snowy road surface, and controllability and stability
Solution Approach 1:
The groove volume is segmented into multiple small grooves rather than one large groove. This segmentation allows water drainage functionality to be distributed across multiple smaller pathways, maintaining drainability while preserving more ground contact area as the grooves occupy less total space than a single large groove of equivalent drainage capacity.
Solution Approach 2:
The groove configuration is optimized locally with varying depths and widths at different positions. The groove depth is greater at the inner side and smaller at the outer side, creating local quality variations that enhance drainage efficiency in critical areas while minimizing the overall groove volume to preserve ground contact area.
2Productivity
If the slant angle of the main groove is adjusted to improve drainability, then water drainage performance is improved, but there is a trade-off with rigidity of land portions which makes it difficult to achieve good braking performance and controllability simultaneously
Solution Approach 1:
The single main groove is segmented into multiple smaller grooves with different slant angles. This allows each groove segment to have optimized drainage characteristics without requiring a uniform high slant angle across the entire tread, thereby maintaining land portion rigidity while achieving effective drainage through the collective action of multiple segmented grooves.
Solution Approach 2:
Different portions of the groove structure have different slant angles optimized for their specific functions. The inner side grooves have greater slant angles for enhanced drainage, while outer side grooves have smaller slant angles to preserve land portion rigidity. This local quality differentiation resolves the trade-off between drainability and structural strength.
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 solution effectively enhances drainage performance while ensuring satisfactory running performance on dry and icy/snowy surfaces by minimizing water turbulence and maintaining a large ground contact area, thus addressing the trade-off issues in existing tire designs.
Implementation Method 1
suppressing occurrence of turbulences in a drainage process of water to improve flow properties of water
Data Source
Figure 1
Figure 2A~2C
Figure 3A~3C
AI summary
A pneumatic tire, comprising: a tread surface; a plurality of grooves formed in the tread surface, including a plurality of widthwise grooves each extending from a corresponding tread end on the inner side in the tread width direction and a plurality of circumferential grooves each extending in the tread circumferential direction to intersect the widthwise grooves; blocks demarcated by the plurality of grooves; and a chamfered portion formed at a corner, on the trailing edge side and on the outer side in the tread width direction, of each block.