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Automotive Tires Without Air

Posted by timothy on from the please-hurry-up-with-these dept.

pcman writes "It appears that in 10 years or so Michelin will have an airless tire. They are presenting them at the Paris Auto Show this week. They hope to adapt them for motorcycles, cars and heavier vehicles. They are non-pneumatic and made of elastic. You can read the whole story here. I am very interested and look forward to the day when I don't have to check tire air pressure. It is the 21st century after all."

2 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. Off-road vehicles by ColaMan · · Score: 4, Informative

    A lot of off-road equipment already have foam-filled or "airless" tyres.

    The difficulty is that you can't adjust the foam compound inside the tyre - once you've filled that tyre and the foam is set that's it. If it's too hard, well, too bad.

    The underground mine that I work at trialled some tyres for their light vehicles (toyota utes and such), as we regularly tear up tyres on rocks and sharp objects.

    The main problems we found were :

    Cost - they were AUD600 or so *each*. But they don't go flat, of course :-)

    Ride quality- you could tell the vehicles with the foam-filled tyres straight away - they were ABSOLUTELY ROCK SOLID.

    Weight - Think about the average volume of a tyre. The tyres on our vehicles were about 60kg each. That's a fair bit more unsprung weight rattling around and loading up your suspension components. The vehicles we trialled them on became noticeably "rattlier" in the suspension over the course of a month. "rattlier" to the point of people saying "what the hell is that noise? Oh , it's just the toyota going by."

    They also trialled them on our heavy equipment, but again , they were too hard on the suspension components, even after trying half a dozen different fill compounds. A worrying number of cracks appeared in the bodies of our trial haul trucks as well... so they decided to can that idea.

    But hey, you know the relentless march of technology, maybe they'll sort it out. Still think they'd be too heavy for my liking - one of the goals of getting good suspension is to reduce unsprung weight (mag wheels, drilled rotors, etc) and adding another 20kg of extra rubber compound on each wheel aint gonna help.

    --

    You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
    There is a lot of hype here.
  2. Re:Propane by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative
    I agree it's stupid, but here is one way people do it.
    Would you inflate your tires with propane? Although most people would answer, "are you crazy, of course not", these same people are routinely inflating their tires with so-called "tire sealants" that are nothing but propane and perhaps a little isobutane.