A scenario of an automotive accident caused by tire failure is given followed by a human factors analysis of the information available to consumers on tire aging. Consumers have not been told that the age of the tire is a safety concern. It is not easy to decode the date of manufacture on tires. More publicity and prominent warnings are needed to communicate the dangers of older tires. Also, be...

This paper presents a distributed control framework for groups of wheeled mobile robots with significant (nonnegligible) vehicle dynamics driving on terrain with variable performance characteristics. A dynamic model of a high-speed robot is developed with attention to representation of wheelterrain performance characteristics. Using this model, aspects of distributed, cooperative control on unk...

Occurrence of top down and bottom up fatigue cracking in asphaltic pavements is common. Conventional pavement analysis methods ignore the existence of cracks in asphaltic layers. However, it seems that the responses of cracked pavement would not be the same as a pavement without crack. This paper describes effects of crack type, position and length, and vehicles tire inflation pressure and axle...

The objective of this report is to provide a short introduction regarding simple tire models that could be used when modeling the military vehicle HMMWV. Drawbacks and advantages associated with the tire models are briefly discussed. The report also introduces a simple three-dimensional tire model that has been implemented to Chrono software [3].

Disposal of used tires has been a major problem in solid waste management. New uses will have to be found to consume recycled tire products. One such proposed use is as ground cover in playgrounds. However, concern has been expressed regarding exposure of children to hazardous chemicals and the environmental impact of such chemicals. We designed a comprehensive hazard assessment to evaluate and...

The performance characteristics of four 24-inch wheelchair tires are considered; one pneumatic and three airless. Specifically, two new airless polyurethane foam tires (circular and tapered cross-section) were compared to both a molded polyisoprene tire and a rubber pneumatic tire. Rolling resistance, coefficient of static friction, spring rate, tire roll-off, impact absorption, wear resistance...

The paper considers an empirical approach to the root-cause analysis of a certain kind of automobile tire failure. Tire life data are obtained from a laboratory test, which is developed to duplicate field failures. A number of parameters related to tire geometry and physical properties are selected as explanatory variables that potentially affect a tire’s life on test. Analysis of the life test...

Simulation is an important aspect to consider when designing an inspection system based upon machine vision. The tire inspection system uses thermal cameras to inspect the surface of a tire. The simulation of a tire inspection system can yield an optimal set of parameters for a thermal camera, or given a specific thermal camera provide information on the optimal placement of the camera. Since t...

In order to improve the precision of the tire pressure monitoring system, the Bayes method is applied to establish its mathematical model of multi-sensor information fusion. The temperature and pressure in the tire, which are the complementary information, are integrated in the model through analyzing the mechanism of tire burst generated by temperature and pressure. Through the temperature com...