Measuring and understanding vertically loaded tire tread footprint pressure distribution is paramount to any tire design process. Improper tire tread pressure distribution can result in bad road traction and high road noise, early tire replacement, and in extreme cases, tire failure.
The Tactilus® tire tread footprint profiling system from Sensor Products LLC is capable of thousands of uses with consistent repeatability, and in its newest version detects a wider range of pressures and offers greater advantages to engineers than its predecessor in the areas of adaptability and customization.
"Tactilus technology particularly lends itself to this sort of application," says Carlos Ruiz, Sensor Products'' Tactilus product manager. "Not only do the systems evaluate such low pressures with ease, but save time by providing information immediately with in-depth statistical data. Really, the response time is so immediate, these systems are also ideal for assembly line assessment for OEMs and aftermarket product manufacturers."
Tactilus is an electronic sensor system that evaluates tactile contact pressures in real-time. The Tactilus tire tread footprint profiling system comes equipped with all components necessary to collect data for comprehensive analysis, including the silicon substrate element with embedded matrix-based sensors, controller, and user-friendly software. The system may be employed for any application where two surfaces mate, contact, or impact. Conformable to highly curvaceous surfaces and intolerant environments, Tactilus is portable and runs on a standard laptop computer.
The upgraded feature-rich software offers 2-D and 3-D imaging, region-of-interest viewing, longitudinal and latitudinal analysis, graphical displays of data in bar, pressure vs. time, line scan, histogram and isobar charts, statistical analysis of average/minimum/maximum pressures, total force over any selected area, and more. The data may also be exported to virtually any third-party software.
In fact, well-known tire companies have used Tactilus in the past. For example, Kumho America technical center manager Dr. Hamid Aboutorabi employed the Tactilus tire tread pressure analysis system in an ongoing effort to improve the tire design process.
"I used the system over a period of time to obtain several static footprint pressure distribution profiles of a loaded tire," said Aboutorabi. "The profiles revealed some very uneven tire tread surface contact areas. The pressure distribution patterns we discovered helped us redesign our tires in pursuit of optimum tread surface contact and road handling properties."