If the tires could speak, they could demand more respect.
Maybe you would stop letting them swell and wear out. Or he could warns you about a nail in the tread that, in a few days, will turn on the tire pressure warning light. It might even help you drive better, stop faster and get better mileage.
Such intelligent tire technology is already in use, with tire companies adding special sensors to certain tires. And eventually, these technologies will become widespread, said TJ Campbell, tire and information test manager at online retailer Tire Rack, because the information tires can provide is so critical.
“I absolutely foresee that this will happen,” he said, “if, for no other reason than that it is the basis for completely autonomous leadership.”
Motor vehicles will have enough random variables to cope with unexpected tire problems, he said. The more there is a warning about a possible problem, such as an air leak or used tread, the better. A self-driving car will also not feel like an experienced human driver when the road surface is slippery or when a car is approaching skidding. Computerized tire technologies will be able to detect imminent traction losses faster and more accurately than the stability control and traction control systems used on most cars today.
While smart tire technologies are available, they are mostly used on very expensive performance tires or in work truck fleets, with fleet managers trying to save every penny.
Changes in temperature and air pressure can greatly affect the way tires and therefore cars behave on a track. Cold tires may not adhere as well as warmer ones. In the meantime, over-inflated tires will have less contact with the asphalt, while under-inflated tires will not be firm enough to provide good control.
The performance of another sorting is even more critical for the 14 meters high tires used in mining trucks. These huge tires can cost $ 50,000 each and are used on trucks the size of a modest two-story suburban home.
“They conduct these operations 24/7,” said Brian Goldstine, president of mobility solutions and fleet management at Bridgestone Americas. “And it seeks to maximize the load and maximize the speed of those vehicles in the mine.”
The sensors in the huge tires transmit information that can be combined with other data from inside the truck, such as how fast it moves or how hard it turns, to have an understanding of how the tires handle the stems, rather than to based on predetermined rules. .
“So they don’t have to use more generic industry standards in terms of the speed at which trucks can drive or how much load,” he said. “We provide them with real-time, real-world data.”
Tire companies also offer this type of technology for more modest commercial fleet operations, such as delivery trucks. As with mining trucks, the information from Tire sensors can help fleet operators save money and keep trucks running during critical business hours.
For operations like these, Bridgestone often uses sensors that simply screw on the valve stem. These sensors can’t do as much as those incorporated inside the tire, but can still transmit critical information, Goldstine said.
“Today, for example, [there is] the opportunity to recognize a slow leak as it happens before the tire reaches that critical threshold, which could create an emergency or a critical situation, “he said.
Most passenger vehicles today already have tire pressure monitoring systems that can warn when a tire has dropped too much air. But usually these low pressure warnings only appear after a crisis is near. By measuring air pressure more directly, smart tires can provide more accurate readings to detect when air is lost, even very gradually, to provide earlier and more accurate warnings.
Smart tires could also detect when traction is lost in certain situations. Pirelli’s CyberTire could do this on wet roads by measuring, as the tire rolls, how much its tread flexes on the road surface, said Pierangelo Misani, head of research and development for the Italian tire manufacturer. If the tread does not flex too much, it means that it walks on water and loses contact with the solid surface of the road.
Detection of tread wear is complicated because these sensors cannot directly measure tread depth. In general, tire companies work on solutions that involve measuring tire wear by comparing how a tire is used – how many miles traveled, how many hard stops, and so on. – or how it bends or vibrates and comparing the data with data collected from the same tire type in tests.
“We have a certain wheel speed. We have some information about vibration. We have some information about the length of the impression and …. other characteristics of the tire,” said Chris Helsel, senior vice president of global operations and technical director of Goodyear. “We can discern from there, to a millimeter of precision, your state of wear.”
Better driving
Smart tires can also help the so-called “driver assistance systems” work better.
Modern cars already have computerized stability control systems, as required by US regulations. These systems work by detecting when a vehicle has started to skid and bring it back in line by briefly applying the brakes to certain individual wheels. Systems that detect loss of traction inside the tire could help cars react faster and better, tire companies say.
The same goes for anti-lock braking systems or ABS, another safety system that is already on modern cars. These systems quickly “pump” the brakes to prevent them from stopping the wheels too quickly – locking – causing the tires to slip on the road surface. With tire wear, smart tire systems can allow the car’s ABS computers to adapt automatically as tire treads wear out, tire companies say.
“We have shown that we can recover 30% of the loss of stopping distance from new and used tires,” said Helsel of Goodyear.
Before these systems can be widely used, however, some kind of standardization is needed. Tire companies will have to cooperate so that all sensors communicate in “similar language,” Campbell said.
This will mean that a car will not always have to use the same brand of tires for life. Customers want their choice, Campbell said. No more when these systems are interchangeable, he said, the tires on most people’s cars will start talking.