The Goodyear & Tire Rubber Company

Pedro Yap

Jeffrey Leon Sevart

Austin Gale Young

Joel Joseph Lazeration

Jonathan James Shondel

Max Harold Dixon

Robert John Hermann

Walter Lee Welker

Thomas Stephen Warchol

Paul Keyser Blackiston

Larry Ashley Gordon

Alan P Dale

Rakesh Reddy Gummalla

Guy Dauphin

Tire

A pneumatic radial ply truck tire for use on medium truck trailers includes a tread, a casing with two sidewalls, one or more radial plies extending from, and wrapped about, two annular beads, and a belt reinforcement structure located radially between the tread and the one or more radial plies. The tread includes a plurality of circumferentially extending tread grooves, a pair of circumferentially extending shoulder ribs, a pair of radially recessed ribs being radially recessed and non-road contacting under static load disposed at a lateral edge of the shoulder ribs, and a pair of circumferentially extending decoupling grooves. Each decoupling groove defines a transition between a corresponding shoulder rib and a corresponding recessed rib. A lateral edge of one of the shoulder ribs has a first radius of curvature forming a transition from a radially outer surface of the shoulder rib to a first side surface of the corresponding decoupling groove. A base surface of the decoupling groove has a second radius of curvature forming a transition from the first side surface to a second side surface of the decoupling groove. A radially outer surface of the corresponding recessed rib has a third radius of curvature forming a continuous transition from the second side surface to a third outer side surface of the shoulder portion of the tread.

Decoupling groove for pneumatic tire tread

Tire tread

A medium pneumatic truck tire (10), has a belt package (18) comprising a plurality of belt plies (20, 22, 24, 26). The tread (16) of the tire is 200 to 380 mm wide (8 inches to 15 inches). In the shoulder area (31) of the tire, an overlay strip (32) is abutted against belt edge (34) of top belt (26) and is disposed over belt edge (33) of the adjacent belt (24). The overlay strip (32) is applied in two layers, and the reinforcing cords (38) therein have an angle of about 0.degree. with respect to the equatorial plane of the tire (10). The overlay strip (32) is about 51 mm (2 inches) wide and has an overlap splice of about 40 mm (1.5 inches). The overlay strip (32) overlaps belt edge (36) by 15 to 20 mm (0.5 to 0.75 inch).

Truck tire with split overlay

Growing community of inventors

Silver Lake, OH, United States of America

Pedro Yap