Bridgestone Firestone North American Tire, LLC

Bridgestone/firestone Research, Inc.

Bridgestone/firestone, Inc.

David M Reep

James G Guspodin

John J Regallis

Andrea Kindig

Leonard F Blankenship

Yasuo Himuro

William B Allison

Shawn L Copeland

Yukio Yamakawa

Timothy J Lassan

Bill J Wallet

Andrea Fantanzo

Everett J Edwards

Yaso Himuro

Michael J Ferraco

John E Young

Ronald I Clunk

A pneumatic tire has an aggressive tread pattern for use on both on-road and off-road vehicles having at least a pair of intermediate ribs and a pair of shoulder ribs providing the ground engaging tread lugs. A plurality of circumferentially extending lug groups are formed on and extend outwardly from and along the sidewalls of the tire. Each lug group preferably includes three separate lugs, each lug having a substantially flat outer surface lying in a different plane than the outer surfaces of the other two lugs. Two of the lugs are radially aligned with each other along the sidewall of the tire with the third lug lying intermediate spaced pairs of these aligned lugs. The lugs are formed with sharp corners offset from each other which extend outwardly from the sidewall to different levels. A top surface of one of the lugs aligns with the ground engaging surface of an adjacent shoulder rib tread lug and the top surface of the intermediate lug aligns with the inner tread surface of the road engaging tread pattern.

Pneumatic tire with sidewall projections

A pneumatic tire has a tread portion, a pair of axially spaced bead areas and a pair of sidewalls. A body ply carcass extends axially between the bead areas and contains three body ply layers which turn-up about the bead areas from inside to outside. Two of the body ply layers are of equal axial lengths with the third body ply layer being considerably less or greater than the other two layers. The highest turn-up end of at least one of the body ply layers has a height of between 42% and 55% of the tire section height.

Three ply layer turn-up pneumatic tire

Tire tread

Tire shoulder region

Growing community of inventors

Copley, OH, United States of America

David M Reep