Techniques to Increase Tire Traction

Tire tread design with improved snow and ice traction without sacrificing dry road performance. The tread has sipes and slots with specific angled features. The key edge of the sipe is angled inward at an angle KA, and the chamfer portion is angled at a different angle CA. This configuration provides better snow traction compared to standard sipes, especially during braking or acceleration. The angled edges retain more contact area during braking to improve braking performance.

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A pneumatic tire with improved wet and snow performance by optimizing the tread pattern. The tire has alternating pairs of asymmetrically inclined main grooves extending from the ground contact edge to the equator. These form staggered land portions extending from the equator to the ground. The innermost blocks in each land have notches opening to the main groove connections, improving drainage. This pattern provides enhanced snow traction, braking, and wet grip compared to traditional symmetrical treads.

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A tire design with improved wet braking performance and steering stability while reducing rolling resistance compared to traditional tires. The tire has circumferential blocks separated by circumferential grooves. The blocks have chamfered edges at the inner and outer ends of the lateral grooves. These chamfered edges provide drainage channels for water evacuation during braking. The chamfer angles and relative sizes of the chamfers optimize wet performance and steering stability without excessive rolling resistance.

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Tire with improved snow traction and wear resistance. The tire has a tread with interleaved main and sub lug grooves. The main lug grooves have wide (15 mm or more) and deep (23.5 mm or more) features for snow traction. The sub lug grooves are narrower (0.10 to 0.35 times the main groove width) and are spaced between the main grooves. This interleaving pattern provides better snow traction by increasing the number of biting edges, while maintaining wear resistance by preventing excessive wear in the narrow sub grooves.

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Rubber compositions with improved wet traction and low rolling resistance for tire treads. The compositions contain a polysulfide crosslinking agent with polar groups that chemically attach to the rubber chains during mixing. This increases the hydrophilicity of the rubber and enhances wet traction without negatively impacting rolling resistance. The crosslinking agent has a polar group like carboxylate or ether that can be grafted onto the rubber during compounding.

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Tire tread rubber composition that improves wet braking, wear, and snow braking performance while maintaining fuel efficiency. The composition contains specific amounts of liquid polybutadiene, aluminum hydroxide, and vulcanizing agent relative to the total rubber. Using these optimized levels provides a tire compound that dramatically enhances wet grip, wear resistance, and snow traction compared to conventional rubber formulations.

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Tire rubber composition and pneumatic tire with significantly improved overall performance in terms of wet grip and fuel economy. The rubber composition has a tan delta vs temperature curve with a peak tan delta and half width satisfying a specific relationship (0.025 or greater). This curve shape provides both enhanced wet grip due to the high peak tan delta and improved wet grip and fuel economy due to the sharp curve. The composition can contain modified BR, silica, silane coupling agents, wax, antioxidants, oil, zinc oxide, sulfur, and accelerators.

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Motorcycle tire with improved grip and wear performance. The tire has a tread with an inner layer (first rubber) and an outer layer (second rubber) adjacent to it. The inner layer forms the tread surface. The first rubber has a lower loss tangent and glass transition temperature compared to the outer layer. This configuration reduces abrasion on the tread while maintaining grip. The lower loss tangent of the inner layer rubber prevents excessive tread wear, while the lower glass transition temperature allows it to deform more readily for better grip.

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Tire design for high and ultra-high performance vehicles with improved traction on ice and snow. The tire has a unique tread pattern with annular grooves and transverse grooves in the center portion. This annular section is delimited by two circumferential channels. The annular grooves have connecting transverse grooves with inclined segments. This configuration provides enhanced grip on icy and snowy roads by breaking up and channeling snow and slush between the grooves. The inclined transverse groove segments further improve snow and ice traction by preventing snow buildup.

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Controlling torque applied to a vehicle wheel using a vehicle control unit that integrates slip control with torque control to improve response time and accuracy. The control unit has a stored tire model where longitudinal force is a function of longitudinal slip. It converts wheel torque requests to wheel speed requests by calculating slip requests based on the corrected tire model. The slip control corrects the tire model function using parameters like age, wear, and load to adapt force-slip behavior. This allows fast, accurate torque control by leveraging the slip control subsystem.

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Vehicle cornering control system specialized for circuit driving that reduces suspension damping force during cornering to improve performance on race tracks. The system determines if the vehicle is cornering on a track based on factors like cylinder pressure, accelerator pedal displacement, lateral acceleration variation, and steering angle. When circuit cornering is detected, the damping force is reduced to minimize load movement and improve grip and yaw response.

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Heavy duty pneumatic tire with improved wet traction and wear resistance. The tire has a zigzagging crown circumferential groove and a zigzagging shoulder circumferential groove. Adjacent crown lateral grooves connect the crowns to shoulders. The crown blocks have smaller sub-grooves with fewer, shorter transverse grooves compared to the wider lateral grooves. This configuration provides enhanced wet traction from the zigzagging main grooves, while the smaller sub-grooves prevent excessive wear.

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Motorcycle tire with improved braking stability and cornering performance. The tire has a unique tread rubber composition and layout. The tread has an inner crown rubber section and outer shoulder rubber sections. The crown rubber has lower stiffness and hardness compared to the shoulders. This allows better braking stability at lower tire deflections. The shoulders have higher stiffness and hardness for better cornering grip at higher deflections. The transition between crown and shoulders is angled to prevent separation. The shoulder-crown boundary extends circumferentially while maintaining the angle. This ensures continuous contact during braking without gaps.

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Vehicle control system that assists off-road driving in rutted terrain by providing guidance to the driver. The system uses sensors to detect rut characteristics and proximity of the vehicle body to the ruts. If the body is too close to the ruts, it defines a strategy to position the vehicle at a higher ground clearance point. It then provides guidance to the driver to execute the strategy. This helps prevent getting stuck in ruts and improving traction. The driver can select an off-road assistance mode that enables this feature.

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Tyres for vehicles with improved grip, wear resistance, and low weight. The tyres contain a rubber matrix with functionalized carbon nanoparticles like graphene and carbon nanotubes. The functionalization improves dispersion of the carbon nanoparticles in the rubber. This provides better grip, structural and chemical properties, and abrasion resistance compared to unfunctionalized carbon nanoparticles. The functionalization involves treating the carbon nanoparticles with chemicals like nitric acid to modify their surface.

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Vehicle control system and method that accurately estimate tire slip limits and maintain tires in the elastic slip state for improved traction and stability. The system estimates tire stiffness and road friction based on vehicle dynamics like speed, acceleration, and torque. It then calculates the adhesion limit driving force for each tire. By controlling the drive source and brakes to keep tire forces below this limit, the tires operate at a constant slip angle. This prevents excessive slippage or locking that can lead to instability. The estimated tire properties also account for factors like load changes and attitude to improve accuracy.

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Tire with improved braking performance and reduced noise compared to conventional tires with shoulder sipes. The tire has a tread with specific sipe configurations on the shoulder region. The sipe design involves chamfered edges on the shoulder sipes. During braking or cornering, the chamfered edges prevent the sipe edges from getting pulled inside the land region and lifting the surface, allowing better grip and braking performance compared to conventional sipes. The chamfered edges also reduce the noise generated by the sipes contacting the road. The tire also has sipes only on the ground contacting surface of the first shoulder land region between the edge and tread, which further improves braking performance by preventing lifting of the land region.

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Optimizing traction control for a transport vehicle like an automated guided vehicle (AGV) in a goods transport system to prevent wheel slipping during acceleration, deceleration, and on inclined paths. The method involves dynamically distributing torque between the front and rear wheels based on the vehicle's speed and path incline. A motion controller generates separate torque signals for the front and rear wheels by adjusting the distribution to improve traction on the specific conditions. This allows maintaining traction and preventing wheel slippage on challenging paths and speeds.

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Pneumatic vehicle tires with improved wet grip and better transmission of tractive force as the tread wears. The tires have treads with profile ribs having sipes that extend parallel to each other. The depth of the main portion of each sipe is less than the depth of the edge portion that leads into the cavity between the rib and groove. This configuration allows good wet grip as the depth of the main sipe portion reduces with wear, while still maintaining stiffness from the wider cavity portion.

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Rubber composition for tires with improved wet grip and ice grip performance. The composition contains a specific diene rubber with a weight average molecular weight of 5,000 to 50,000 and a unique structure. The rubber has a high mol % of 1,2-bonds in the butadiene units, but also contains specific structural units represented by the formula (1). This composition, when crosslinked, provides tires with enhanced wet grip and ice grip properties compared to traditional rubber compounds.

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