GB2183205A

GB2183205A - Non-slip tire

Info

Publication number: GB2183205A
Application number: GB08627655A
Authority: GB
Inventors: Riyoukou Miura
Original assignee: Individual
Current assignee: Individual
Priority date: 1985-11-26
Filing date: 1986-11-19
Publication date: 1987-06-03
Also published as: DE3640384A1; FR2590523A1; IT8622448A1; GB2183205B; IT8622448A0; SE8604992D0; GB8627655D0; CN86107950B; NL8602981A; KR920008083B1; IT1198160B; SE8604992L; CN86107950A; KR870004846A; CH672291A5; FR2590523B1

Abstract

The tyre comprises inserts 2A of compacted fibrous material embedded in the tread 7 to form a non-slip surface. The fibrous material may be synthetic or natural such as canvas, flax cotton, pulp, wooden chip, straw or metal. The inserts are made by cutting blocks of rubber bonded canvas, for example, into rectangular or cylindrical shapes. The fibrous material absorbs water so that on icy roads, the freezing of the absorbed water adheres the tyre to the road. <IMAGE>

Description

SPECIFICATION Non-slip tire BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION Field of the invention: This invention relates to a novel non-slip tire for preventing the tire from slipping mainly due to fallen snow, frozen road, snowfall or rainfall during the travel of a vehicle.

Description of the prior art: Tire chains or snow spike tires have been heretofore utilized for non-slip tires. The former is complicated in mounting, and the latter causes a problem powder dust public pollution with spikes. A water film tends to be formed between a rubber fiber and a road surface, and there is a limit in the conventional tire to improve the tire rubber. The inventor has been developed a non-slip tire for snowfall road due to this standpoint. As a result, it is discovered for a tire to provide a performance of bonding or adhering to a pressurized snowfall or frozen road surface or absorbing water. However, a tire which has such performance or property is unknown, and its prior art is not yet presented.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION An object of this invention is to provide a non-slip tire having water absorbability on its tread to effectively remove a cause of slip and having an effect of pressing a snowfall surface.

Another object of this invention is to provide a non-slip tire having bondability, adherability and water absorbability to iced snowfall surface to effectively prevent the tire from slipping during the travel and at braking time and readily facilitating a start.

The above objects of this invention are achieved by a tire in which a fibrous material made of vegetable fiber, animal fiber, synthetic fiber or the like is gathered and solidified to form a number of non-slip small pieces of predetermined sectional shape in such a manner that the small pieces are buried in the tread of the tire so that the sectional surface of the fibrous material is disposed outside.

According to this construction, a number of small pieces formed by solidifying fibrous material are buried on the ground contacting surface of the tire. Therefore, the sectional surface of the fibrous material is exposed and contacted with the ground to absorb water to cause the tire to slip and adhered to the frozen road, and water between the ground contacting surface of the tire and the road is adhered to one another to prevent the tire from slipping.

The small pieces engated within recesses of the tire of this invention correspond to spike pins of a conventional spike tire, but are not intruded into the road surface, but have a different property of absorbing water and bonding to an iced snowfall surface. The material having such a property includes a fibrous material, which contains various types of woven cloth or nonwoven cloth, or paper of both natural and synthetic fibers. However, preferable fibrous material includes cloth of vegetable fiber having preferable water absorbability such as, for example, canvas, other flax, and cotton cloth. Pulp, wooden chip or straw are usable.

This invention is constructed by engaging a number of small pieces made of fibrous material solidified with rubber or bonding agent in a multilayer shape with the tread of a tire body, exposing the sectional surface of the fibrous material such as canvas and contacting with the ground to absorb water to cause the tire to slip mainly by means of capillary tube phenomenon to thereby bond or adhere the tire to the road surface of iced snowfall road at low temperature lower than icing point.

Since water is impregnated to the small pieces when the small pieces and the road surface are moistened with the water, even if the water is presented on the iced snowfall surface, a water film is hardly formed between the ground contacting surface of the traveling tire and the road surface, frozen iced snowfall surface is readily liquefied by the traveling tire to cause the water impregnated to the small pieces to be quickly cooled to be bonded to the tire. Therefore, in any case, it can prevent the tire from slipping. The lower the road temperature falls, the faster the bonding action to the road surface is accelerated to provide strong force to adhere the tire to the road.

The following advantages are provided according to this invention (1) Since the tread of the tire body originally having no water absorbability incorporates water absorbability with a number of small pieces having water absorbability, water provided between the tire and the road surface is absorbed to the small pieces to prevent the tire from slipping.

(2) The tire is hardly slipped by the bonding force acting between the water impregnated in the small pieces and the frozen snowfall surface for freezing the water due to the temperature fall, and the tire is readily restarted on the road after stopped.

(3) Since a number of the small pieces formed of a material different from the tire rubber are engaged with the tread of the tire, the property of the tread becomes irregular to improve the frictional resistance between the tire and the road.

The above and other objects of this invention will become apparent to read the following description and the accompanying drawings sown by way of illustration example.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS Fig. 1 is a perspective view of a first em bodiment of a non-slip mechanism of a nonslip tire according to this invention; Fig. 2 is a perspective view of a second embodiment of a non-slip tire according to this invention; Fig. 3 is a perspective view of a tire; Figs. 4, 5 and 6 are partially developed views of two examples of a tread pattern; Fig. 7 is a perspective view of a third embodiment of a no-slip tire according to this invention; Figs. 8 and 9 are front views of two examples of small piece as seen from a sectional side; Figs. 10 and 11 are sectional views of two embodiments of small piece engaging structure; Fig. 12 is a partially developed view of an example of a tread pattern, Figs. 13 and 14 are sectional views taken along the lines XIII-XIII and XIV-XIV of Fig.

12; and Fig. 15 is a perspective view of a tire.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODI MENTS Embodiments of a non-slip tire of this invention will be described hereinbelow in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

Reference numeral 1 designates a fibrous material and numeral 2 designates small pieces gathered and solidified from the material 1.

Fig. 1 shows a lateral long block-shaped small piece 2A, Fig. 2 shows a cylindrical pinshaped small piece 2B, and Fig. 6 shows a square-sectional cylindrical pin-shaped small piece 2C. Numeral 3 designates a tire, and numerals 5A, 5B and 5C designate grooves for burying the small pieces 2A, 2B and 2C formed on the tread 4 of the tire. The long rectangular groove 5A has a neck 6 at the center, and the cylindrical groove 5B and the square-sectional cylindrical groove 5C are formed smaller than the small piece 2B. The small pieces 2A and 2B are formed by gathering vegetable fiber, animal fiber, synthetic resin or metal, mineral fiber and molding in any of the shapes as described above.More specifically, the small piece 2A is formed by bonding a number of canvases with a bonding agent (or rubber) and cutting the bonded canvases in a suitable size, and the small pieces 2B and 2C are formed by bundling stringshaped or short fiber in a round rod shape or a square-sectional rod shape, coating rubber or bonding agent on the periphery, and then cutting in the predetermined shape. The pieces have water absorbability of the fiber itself and capillary tube phenomenon between the fibers.

Reference numeral 7 designates a side-trapezoidal tread projection, numeral 8 designates a small wall provided to prevent snow from escaping to the outside, and numeral 9 designates a bank provided to similarly prevent the snow from escaping or to solidify the snow. As described above, the small pieces 2 are buried on the projections 7 of the tread.

In addition to the abovementioned method of engaging the small pieces after forming the grooves 5, the small pieces may be buried in an inserting type at tire molding time. In this case, it is possible to improve by adding means for preventing the small pieces from removing. Numeral 10 designates the peripheral oblique surfaces of the tread. The shape of the projection 7 includes a rectangular shape (in Figs. 4 and 5) or tapered shape (in Fig. 6) exemplified, but is not limited to these examples.

Figs. 7 to 15 show still another examples of the small pieces. A small piece 21 having a water absorbability has a structure that canvases 22 and rubber layers 23 are alternatively laminated. The small piece in Fig. 7 is formed in a lateral long block shape. However, the small piece may be also formed in an arbitrary shape such as a cylindrical pin shape or a trapezoidal shape. The small piece 21 of cubic block shape may be formed by cutting a large lump to small pieces of predetermined size, and the surface of the canvas 22 exposed at the sectional surface of thicknesswise direction of the canvas 22 is used as a ground contacting surface 24, and small pieces are buried in a predetermined pattern in the tread 26 of a tire body 25. Fig. 8 shows a laminate in which canvases 22 and rubber layers are alternatively superposed.Fig. 9 shows an example in which rubber plates 23 are used between the canvases 22 and which mainly contributes to the water absorbability at the sectional surface of the canvas fiber bundle. A method of mounting the small pieces 21 has the steps of forming a number of engaging grooves 27 having necks 27 substantially at the centers at tire manufacturing time, engaging and bonding the small pieces 21 with the grooves 27, or the step of integrally molding simultaneously the small pieces 21 at tire manufacturing time. Any method may be preferably employed. Figs. 10 and 11 show examples of the relationships between the small piece 21 and the engaging groove 27 in which both are press-fitting type. The small piece of Fig. 10 has a round bottom 21a, and the engaging groove 27 of Fig. 11 has a projection 27b at the bottom. Both prevents the small piece 21 from removing by stably bonding the small piece on the bottom of the groove. Numeral 27C designates a substantially T-shaped groove of plane to escape air around the small piece at tire ground contacting time and to absorb the vibrations at both sides.

Then, a method of manufacturing the small piece will be described, The method has the steps of coating a primer on a canvas (of No.

6 in JIS (Japanese Industrial Standard), drying it, then bonding rubber of 0.2mm thick in 6 layer structure, setting it in a press having 100 tons of the maximum load, pressing it to compress it, further vulcanizing it with steam of 7 to 8 atms for 15 min., thereby produing a small piece material. This material was executed for canvas (of Nos. 1 to 11 specified in JIS L-3102) and paper fibrous material, the thickness of the rubber was altered as required, 3-ply to 10 and several layers of materials were manufactured, and small pieces of several mm to 30 and several mm of lateral and longitudinal sizes and several mm to 10 mm of thickness were manufactured. The small pieces were contacted with ice lump, pressed for bonding for 1 to several seconds, then raised to test a bonding force at low temperature. The small piece of the canvas No. 6 could raise 7 kg.

The tread 26 of the tire body 25 is formed with a tread 32 with a group of projections 28, 29, 30, 31 disposed to partly surround the tread as a set over the entire peripheral surface, having right and left projections 8 and 9 long in the lateral direction of the tire, small projections 30 and 32 disposed at the front and rear between the projections 8 and 9, and fine projections 12 projected partly to surround the small projections 30, 31. The tread also has a space surrounded by a group of projections 28', 29', 30', 31' at both sides.

The shapes of the projections 28 to 31 and 28' to 31' and 32 are as designated in plan and sectional views, but are not limited to the particular examples. As described above, the fibrous material absorbs water and to bond the road by acting the water or iced snowfall on the iced snowfall road and wear as the tire rubber wears.

Claims

1. A tire in which a fibrous material made of vegetable fiber, animal fiber, synthetic fiber or the like is gathered and solidified to form a number of non-slip small pieces of predetermined sectional shape in such a manner that the small pieces are buried in the tread of the tire so that the sectional surface of the fibrous material is disposed outside.

2. A tire in which a fibrous material is molded with rubber or bonding agent, small pieces having water absorbability and surfaces exposed at the sectional surfaces of the material are formed at least one surface by processing the molded material, and engaged with a number of recesses formed on the tread of the tire body so that the small pieces are projected slightly from the exposed surfaces.

3. The tire as claimed in claim 2, wherein the fibrous material is formed of natural or synthetic fiber made of a canvas or other rigid woven cloth, nonwoven cloth or rigid paper.

4. The tire as claimed in claim 2, wherein the tread of the tire body has a group of projections disposed to partly surround the tread of the tire, and recesses for engaging the small pieces are formed at the projections.