Innovations for Enhancing Snow Road Performance of Tires

Winter tire rubber composition provides improved grip on ice and reduced rolling resistance compared to conventional winter tire compounds. The composition contains specific ratios of 3 types of rubber with different glass transition temperatures, high amounts of low Tg plasticizers, and high levels of silica filler. The rubber types are low Tg polybutadiene, medium Tg polybutadiene, and polyisoprene. The silica provides grip and rolling resistance benefits. The low Tg plasticizers keep the rubber flexible at low temperatures. The composition is free of styrene-butadiene rubber.

Tire tread design with sipes that maintain performance as the tire wears. The tread has sipes with three different depths, forming three levels in the tread blocks. The shallowest sipes are at the top level and the deepest sipes are at the bottom level. This allows the sipes to maintain their biting edges and void volume as the tread wears down, improving wet and snow traction over the life of the tire. The staggered depth levels also prevent damage or tearing when the mold is removed from the tread during manufacturing.

Winter tire tread design with improved snow traction in both new and worn states. The tread has three radial zones with different rubber compositions. The outer zone has low sulfur and accelerator amounts. The inner zone has high sulfur and accelerator amounts. The middle zone has intermediate sulfur and accelerator amounts. This composition gradient provides the best balance of new and worn snow traction. The tire has a better initial snow grip and maintains grip as it wears compared to conventional tires.

Winter tire tread formulation with good cold-weather performance and excellent traction on wet, snow-covered, and icy roads. The tread uses a combination of high and low Tg elastomers with silica and carbon black fillers. The elastomers are solution SBR, emulsion SBR, and cis-polybutadiene rubber. The silica has reduced coupling agent levels and increased silanization times to improve hysteresis and abrasion resistance. The tread can also contain vegetable oil extension of the elastomers for further cold weather flexibility.

Tire design for improved traction on snow. The tire has shoulder grooves with protrusions that extend radially from the tire surface. The protrusions have a U-shape, with two arms on the shoulder blocks and a connecting arm in the groove. This configuration improves snow traction by providing additional biting edges when the tire contacts the snow surface.

A tire with zigzag sipes in the tread that allows for better traction on snow and ice when the tire is worn. The zigzag sipes have a changing amplitude from the sipe opening to the maximum depth, with the maximum amplitude not at the opening. This ensures that as the tire wears, the exposed sipe edges still provide biting edges for traction.

A pneumatic tire design that balances traction on snowy surfaces with dry road performance. The tire has a specific sipe configuration where sipe lengths are controlled on certain areas of the tire. This prevents excessive sipe deformation and maintains land rigidity on dry surfaces while allowing sipes to widen for improved snow traction.

A tire design with improved traction on snow and ice without sacrificing wet performance. The tire has circumferential grooves and lugs like a typical tire but adds a narrow circumferential groove within one of the land areas. This narrow groove has bends and an inclination opposite to the main grooves. This creates a zigzag shape with long and short sections. The zigzag groove configuration allows increasing the total groove area to enhance snow traction while avoiding the reduction in land rigidity that hurts ice performance.

A pneumatic tire design that improves off-road performance (snow/mud) and durability compared to conventional tires. The tire has stepped buttress regions on the inner edge of the tread. These stepped regions have staggered heights, with the highest step closest to the tread edge. The stepped buttress design provides better traction in snow/mud and prevents stones from getting trapped in the grooves.

A pneumatic tire with improved resistance to heel and toe wear while maintaining traction on snowy and muddy roads. The tire has alternating shoulder blocks with inwardly inclined portions on each side. The inclines on one side are deeper than the other side. The blocks are separated by paired shoulder slits. This configuration balances block rigidity across the slits to reduce uneven wear.

Rubber formulation for tire treads that improves snow performance compared to conventional compositions without sacrificing chipping resistance. The rubber composition contains specified amounts of natural rubber, butadiene rubber, filler, sulfur, vulcanization accelerator, and oil.

Tire with improved snow and wear performance by having notched shoulder blocks with stepped walls. The tire has shoulder land portions with blocks having notches connecting the edge and buttress portions. The notches have stepped walls in cross-section. This provides the rigidity for good wear resistance while also improving snow performance via the snow discharge effect.

A tire design that improves traction on snow and ice without sacrificing dry and wet road performance. The tire has an optimized lug geometry with bent portions to enhance snow and ice grip. The lugs have bent edges that extend in the tire's circumferential direction. This increases the lug length and allows more snow to enter the groove for improved traction on snow and ice. The bent edge portions also increase the rigidity of the center land area to reduce deformation under load for better dry and wet road performance.

Tire tread design to improve snow road performance without sacrificing dry road stability. The tread blocks have recesses with V-shaped openings on the tread side and wider openings on the sidewall side. The recesses help form snow columns for traction on packed snow roads. The wider sidewall openings allow snow to enter and pack the recesses.

Tire tread pattern with improved snow traction and wet performance. The tread includes inclined groove sets that extend from the center toward the sides and one direction around the tire. The grooves project at an angle across the tire width. This configuration improves snow and wet traction compared to traditional tread patterns by allowing better drainage.

Tire tread design with asymmetric inner and outer sides to optimize snow traction, wear resistance, and wet/dry performance. The design involves a tread with lateral grooves and sipes on the inner and outer tread regions that are deeper and have more blocks compared to the opposite side. This provides improved snow traction on one side while maintaining dry/wet performance and wear resistance. The inner and outer side differences are specified by metrics like groove area ratio, block count, sipe length, and land area.

Tire with an asymmetric tread pattern for improved dry, wet, and snow performance. The tire has lateral grooves, blocks, and sipes with specific geometries on the inner and outer sides of the tread. The inner side has wider grooves, more blocks, longer sipes with 3D shapes, and more land area compared to the outer side. This asymmetry balances improving snow performance without degrading dry/wet performance.

A tire design with sipes optimized for snow traction while preventing clogging by snow. The tire has a center land portion with lug grooves that open to circumferential grooves. Sipes are placed on each side of the center lugs. A width-direction sipe opens to the circumferential groove and terminates within the center land, while a circumferential sipe opens to the center lug groove and connects to the width-direction sipe. The sipe angles and positions are controlled to reduce the center land stiffness for snow clearing.

A tire designed to improve driving performance on snow. The tire tread has land portions with sidewalls that have step-like stair features between surfaces facing the grooves. The stair portion varies its radial height in two or more steps along the groove direction. This provides powerful traction in the longitudinal groove direction when driving on snowy roads.

A tire design that provides excellent snow performance while maintaining wear resistance, particularly for passenger cars. The tire has a specific groove arrangement in the tread that allows it to dig into the snow without clogging while maintaining good wear characteristics. The tread has a first shoulder circumferential groove near the first tread edge, a second shoulder circumferential groove near the second tread edge, and one or more middle circumferential grooves between them. The middle grooves are angled relative to the shoulder grooves so that snow is less likely to clog the shoulder grooves.