Tire Tread Grooves with Profiled Protrusions for Aquaplaning Resistance
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing tire treads struggle to maintain effective road contact and prevent aquaplaning on wet roads, especially at high speeds, due to disturbances in water flow mechanisms, leading to reduced safety and performance.
Innovation Solution
The tire tread features transverse grooves with profiled protrusions and a closure device that creates an inverse-lift effect, enhancing water flow and contact pressure by ensuring at least 80% of the groove's cross-sectional area is closed, using a concave curved profile and half-protrusions separated by a thin slit to maintain contact and limit movement.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If transverse grooves are provided in the tread to guide water flow, then water removal capability is improved, but the groove faces may come together under load reducing effectiveness
Solution Approach 1:
The invention applies a unilateral connection through profiled protrusions at specific locations (in the groove) rather than throughout the entire groove structure. This localized approach allows the groove faces to remain separated where water flow is needed while maintaining connection where structural stability is required, resolving the contradiction between water removal capability and groove face separation stability.
Solution Approach 2:
The groove is segmented into different functional zones: the profiled protrusions create discrete connection points while the remaining groove space remains open for water flow. This segmentation allows simultaneous achievement of water guidance function and structural stability without requiring the entire groove structure to be either fully open or fully connected.
2Productivity
If the groove is completely open to maximize water flow, then water removal is improved, but the opposing faces come together under vehicle load reducing roadholding
Solution Approach 1:
The profiled protrusions provide localized unilateral connections at specific positions within the groove, allowing the groove to remain predominantly open for water flow while having discrete points of connection to prevent complete face contact under load. This resolves the contradiction by having different regions serve different functions.
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of using a bilateral connection that prevents both separation and coming-together (which would block water flow), the invention uses a unilateral connection that only prevents coming-together under load while allowing separation. This inverted approach to connection mechanics enables simultaneous water flow and load-bearing capability.
3Strength
If profiled protrusions provide bilateral mechanical connection, then structural stability is improved, but water flow through the groove is restricted
Solution Approach 1:
The invention inverts the conventional bilateral connection approach by implementing a unilateral connection through profiled protrusions. This unilateral connection only prevents the groove faces from coming together under load, while deliberately allowing them to separate under water pressure, thereby maintaining both structural stability and water flow capability.
Solution Approach 2:
The profiled protrusions create localized connection points rather than continuous bilateral connection. This localized approach provides sufficient structural stability at discrete points while leaving the majority of the groove cross-section open for water flow, resolving the contradiction between strength and water flow volume.
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
This design improves roadholding and contact pressure, reducing the likelihood of aquaplaning by optimizing water flow and hydrodynamic pressure interaction, thereby enhancing safety and performance in rainy conditions.
Implementation Method 1
the circulation of water around each protrusion positioned in at least one groove... these protrusions have an extrados and an intradros which are suited to creating an inverse-lift effect resulting in an increase in the contact pressure between the tire and the road which opposes the effect of the hydrodynamic pressure
Data Source
AI summary
Tire provided with a tread surface and lateral faces intersecting at two corner edges to determine a total width of tread between the said two corner edges, provided with grooves of depth H opening onto the tread surface and delimited by faces of material which are distant by at least a width equal to 2 mm, a plurality of grooves on at least one of the opposing faces that delimit them with at least one profiled protrusion delimited by a radially external surface and by a radially internal surface, the radially external surface being closer to the tread surface than the radially internal surface, meeting at those points of the protrusion that are furthest away in the direction of the groove, each of these radially internal and external surfaces of each protrusion has, in a plane of section parallel to the faces delimiting the groove, a profile of length greater than the length of the profile of the radially internal surface.