If the tires could speak, they could demand more respect.
Maybe you’ll stop letting them swell and wear out. They could warn you of a nail on the tread that, in a couple of days, will cause the tire pressure warning light to come on. They can even help you drive better, stop earlier and get better gas mileage.
This smart tire technology like this is already in use, as tire companies add special sensors to certain tires. And eventually, these technologies will become widespread, said TJ Campbell, head of tire information and testing at online retailer Tire Rack, because the information tires can provide is so critical.
“I absolutely foresee this to happen,” he said, “Yes, for no other reason, that his is the basis for fully autonomous driving.”
Vehicles with automatic driving will have enough random variables to deal with them without unexpected tire problems, he said. The more warning there is of a potential problem, such as an air leak or worn steps, the better. An autonomous car will also not have the feeling of an experienced human driver when the road surface is slippery or when a car approaches skating. Computerized tire technologies will be able to detect impending loss of traction more quickly and accurately than the stability control and traction control systems used in most current vehicles.
While smart tire technologies are available, they are used primarily in high-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 performance of tires and therefore of cars on a track. Cold tires may not stick as well as warmer ones. Meanwhile, over-inflated tires will have less contact area with the asphalt, while lightly inflated tires will not be firm enough to provide good control.
Performance of another the class is even more critical for the 14-foot-tall tires used in mining trucks. These huge tires can cost $ 50,000 each and are used in trucks the size of a modest two-story suburban home.
“They’re running these operations 24/7,” said Brian Goldstine, president of mobility and fleet management solutions at Bridgestone Americas. “And they’re looking to maximize the load and maximize the speed of these vehicles in the mine.”
Huge tire sensors transmit information that can be combined with other data coming from the truck, such as the speed at which it moves or the difficulty it turns, to get an idea of how they handle the tires instead of relying on default rules. .
“Therefore, they should not use more generic industry standards about the speed at which trucks can be driven or the amount of cargo,” he said. “We give them real-time, real-world data.”
Tire companies also offer this type of technology for more modest commercial fleet operations, such as for delivery trucks. As with mining trucks, the information from tire sensors can help fleet operators save money and get trucks running during peak working hours.
For operations like these, Bridgestone usually uses sensors that just screw on the valve stem. These sensors can’t do as much as these inlaid inside the tire, but they can still transmit critical information, Goldstine said.
“Today, for example, [there is] the opportunity to recognize a slow leak as it occurs before the tire reaches that critical threshold, which could create an emergency or a critical situation, ”he said.
Currently, most passenger vehicles already have tire pressure monitoring systems that can warn when a tire has fallen too low. But usually these low-pressure warnings only appear once it’s almost a crisis. By measuring air pressure more directly, smart tires can provide more accurate readings to detect when air is lost, even very gradually, to provide more accurate and earlier warnings.
Smart tires can also detect when traction is lost in some situations. Pirelli’s CyberTire could do this on wet roads by measuring, as the tire rolls, the amount of tread flexed against the road surface, said Pierangelo Misani, head of research and development for the manufacturer of Italian tires. If the tread does not flex much, it means that it circulates on the water and loses contact with the solid surface of the road.
Tire wear detection is complicated, as 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 steep stops, etc.) or how it bends or vibrates and compares to data collected from the same type of tire in the tests.
“We have some wheel speed. We have information about vibrations. We have information about footprint and … other tire characteristics,” said Chris Helsel, senior vice president of global operations and head of technology at Goodyear. “We can discern from here, with a millimeter of accuracy, your state of wear.”
Better driving
Smart tires can also help make so-called “driver assistance systems” work better.
Modern cars already have computerized stability control systems, as required by U.S. regulations. These systems work by detecting when a vehicle has started to skid and put it back in line by briefly applying brakes to specific individual wheels. Systems that detect loss of traction from the same tire could help cars react faster and better, tire companies say.
The same goes for anti-lock braking systems or ABS, another safety system already found in modern cars. These systems quickly “pump” the brakes to prevent the wheels from stopping too quickly (locking), causing the tires to slide over the road surface. As tires wear out, smart tire systems can allow the car’s ABS equipment to adjust automatically as the tires wear out, tire companies say.
“We’ve shown that we can recover 30% of the braking distance loss from new versus used tires,” Helsel of Goodyear said.
Before these systems can be widely used, however, some sort of standardization is needed. Tire companies will have to cooperate so that all of their sensors communicate in a similar “language,” Campbell said.
This would mean that a car will not always have to use the same brand of tires all its life. Customers want choice, Campbell said. Not more he said, when these systems are interchangeable, most people’s car tires will start talking.