Tire Shoulder Composite Grooves for Strain Reduction
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Solution Overview
Problem
Tires with composite grooves on the shoulder land portion experience strain under high contact pressure, leading to deterioration of dry performance, despite maintaining wet performance.
Innovation Solution
The tire design includes curved shoulder lateral and composite grooves with specific dimensions and configurations, such as sipe and groove elements, and recesses on the buttress surface, which reduce strain and enhance both dry and wet performance.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the groove width is increased to improve water drainage, then wet performance is improved, but the tread surface area is reduced leading to deteriorated dry performance
Solution Approach 1:
The groove structure is divided into sipe elements and groove elements. The sipe elements maintain narrow width to preserve tread surface area for dry performance, while the groove elements provide adequate width for water drainage. This segmentation resolves the contradiction by assigning different width functions to different elements.
Solution Approach 2:
Different parts of the groove structure have different widths optimized for their specific functions. The sipe elements have narrow width (≤1.5mm) localized for maintaining surface area, while groove elements have wider width (>1.5mm) localized for water drainage. This local differentiation allows simultaneous optimization for both dry and wet performance.
Data Source
AI summary
In a tire having composite grooves provided on a shoulder land portion, dry performance and wet performance are improved. The tire includes a tread portion 2. The tread portion 2 includes a first shoulder land portion 13. The first shoulder land portion 13 has shoulder lateral grooves 15 and shoulder composite grooves 20. The shoulder lateral grooves 15 and the shoulder composite grooves 20 are each curved so as to be convex in a tire circumferential direction. Each shoulder composite groove 20 includes, in a cross section thereof, a sipe element 21 having a width not greater than 1.5 mm and extending from a tread surface of the first shoulder land portion 13 in a tire radial direction, and a groove element 22 connected to an inner side in the tire radial direction of the sipe element 21 and having a width greater than 1.5 mm.