RE: NexGen TPMS or Tire Pressure Monitoring System: The Gap

dougw — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 01:16:39 GMT

Way back when... I worked on a system to measure the rolling resistance of truck tires on real roads. Imagine how much money would be saved if the rolling resistance of all truck tires could be reduced by 1%. In addition to measuring all the forces on the tires, our system monitored the tire pressure and interior temperature. Interestingly the air temperature could rise to around 100 degrees C just from flexing friction, even in the middle of winter - this could make the tire pressure increase from 50%. So it might be useful to also measure temperature. Incidentally, that system could also adjust the tire pressure up or down on the fly or regulate it to a constant pressure regardless of temperature. (One thing we wanted to do was correlate tire pressure to rolling resistance). Instrumented tires might help reduce fuel costs by comparing tire readings to fuel consumption. If a database is used to collect the data it could help people choose more efficient tires, so internet connection adds a little more value. Another thing we were interested in is how the road surface affected fuel consumption. So if the data indicates the relative fuel efficiency of the road surface, and it is tied to GPS readings it may help people plot the route with the lowest cost of fuel. Even when electric vehicles take over, tire and road efficiency will still be very relevant.

Doug

RE: NexGen TPMS or Tire Pressure Monitoring System: The Gap

DAB — Thu, 23 Jul 2015 19:46:24 GMT

I had some friends who worked at the Wright Patterson tire test center where they tested various aircraft tires for landing abuse.

I had suggested that it would be easy to have the tires rotate at the airspeed with just a few modifications. A moving tire would reduce the wear and tear on the tires by a considerable degree, but no body wanted to propose it as a solution.

So I am not surprised that tire issues are still a problem in the aviation field.

Car and truck tires suffer more from operator neglect than just about any other form of abuse.

A low inflation value is usually a sign of more serious problem and I suspect that all the warning will do is have the people just put more air into the tire rather than doing a close examination for other problems.

DAB