If tires could speak, they could demand more respect.
Perhaps you would stop letting them inflate and wear out. Or they could warn about a nail in the tread that, in a few days, will turn on the tire pressure warning light. They can even help you to drive better, stop earlier and get better fuel consumption.
Intelligent tire technology like this is already in use, with tire companies adding special sensors to certain tires. And eventually, these technologies will spread, said TJ Campbell, tire information and testing manager at Tire Rack online store, because the information that tires can provide is very critical.
“I absolutely predicted this would happen,” he said, “if, for no other reason, than that, it is the basis for a fully autonomous direction.”
Cars that drive alone will have enough random variables to cope without unexpected tire problems, he said. The more warnings there are about a potential problem, such as leaking air or worn steps, the better. A car that drives itself will also not feel like an experienced human driver when the road surface is slippery or when the car is about to skid. Computerized tire technologies will be able to detect impending loss of traction more quickly and accurately than the stability and traction control systems used in most cars today.
Although smart tire technologies are available, they are mainly used in high-performance tires or in fleets of work trucks with fleet managers trying to save every penny.
Changes in temperatures and air pressure can greatly affect the performance of tires and, therefore, of cars on a track. Cold tires may not adhere as well as warmer ones. Meanwhile, tires with excessive pressure will have less contact area with the asphalt, while tires with insufficient pressure will not be firm enough to provide good control.
Performance of a different type is even more critical for those 14 feet tall 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 are running these operations 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” said Brian Goldstine, president of mobility and fleet management solutions at Bridgestone Americas. “And they are looking to maximize the load and maximize the speed of the vehicles within the mine.”
Sensors on the huge tires transmit information that can be combined with other data coming from inside the truck, such as the speed with which it is moving or with what difficulty it is turning, to get a sense of how the tires are handling the stresses, instead to depend on predetermined rules.
“Thus, they do not need to use more general industry standards on the speed with which trucks can drive or the amount of cargo,” he said. “We are providing real-time data, 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, 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 it onto the valve stem. These sensors cannot do as much as those built-in inside the tire, but they can still convey critical information, Goldstine said.
“Today, for example, [there is] the opportunity to recognize a slow leak while it is happening before the tire reaches that critical limit, 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 becomes too flat. But, usually, these low pressure warnings only appear when it is almost a crisis. By measuring air pressure more directly, smart tires can provide more accurate readings to detect when air is being lost, even very gradually, to provide earlier and more accurate warnings.
Smart tires can also detect when traction is being lost in some situations. Pirelli’s CyberTire could do this on wet roads by measuring, as the tire rolls, how much its tread is flexing against the road surface, said Pierangelo Misani, head of research and development at the Italian tire manufacturer. If the floor is not flexing too much, it means that it is floating in water and losing contact with the solid surface of the road.
The detection of tread wear is complicated, as these sensors cannot directly measure the tread depth. Generally, tire companies are working on solutions that involve measuring tire wear, comparing how a tire is being used – how many kilometers driven, how many sudden stops, etc. – or how it is bending or vibrating and comparing it to data collected from the same type of tire in tests.
“We have some wheel speed. We have some information about vibration. We have some information about the length of the footprint and … other characteristics of the tire,” said Chris Helsel, senior vice president of global operations and Goodyear, chief technology officer. “We are able to discern from there, with a millimeter of precision, its state of wear and tear.”
Best Direction
Smart tires can also help so-called “driver assistance systems” work better.
Modern cars already have computerized stability control systems, as required by United States regulations. These systems work by detecting when a vehicle has started to skid and put it back on the line by briefly applying the brakes to specific individual wheels. Systems that detect loss of traction within the tire itself can help cars react faster and better, tire companies say.
The same goes for anti-lock braking systems, or ABS, another safety system that already exists in modern cars. These systems quickly “pump” the brakes to prevent them from stopping the wheels too quickly – locking – causing the tires to skid on the road surface. As tires wear out, smart tire systems can allow ABS computers in the car to automatically adjust as tire brands wear out, tire companies say.
“We have shown that we can recover 30% of the stopping distance loss that comes from new versus used tires,” said Helsel of Goodyear.
Before these systems can become widely used, some kind of standardization is necessary. Tire companies will have to cooperate so that all of their sensors communicate in a similar “language”, Campbell said.
This means that a car will not always have to use the same brand of tires throughout its life. Customers want choice, said Campbell. Only when these systems are interchangeable, he said, most people’s car tires will start talking.