The Goodyear & Tire Rubber Company

Philippe Marie Manne

Pascale De Briey-Terlinden

Laurent Colantonio

Frank Philpott

Jean J Collette

Johan Peter Dahlberg

André Domange

Both a mold blade for forming sipes and the sipe so formed in a tire tread element have three dimensional portions. In the formed sipe, the three dimensional portion creates a constant interlocking of the opposing sipe faces. The blade and the sipe have at least one row of alternating polygonal shaped recesses and protrusions. The recesses and protrusions terminate in a vertex; the vertex has a planar, or two-dimensional, configuration that is parallel to either-the blade centerline or the sipe centerline.

Three-dimensional sipes for treads

The present invention relates to a radial ply tire ( ) with a tread ( ) subdivided transversely into a central portion ( ) having central ribs ( ), shoulder portions ( ) having shoulder ribs ( ) and intermediate portions ( ) having intermediate ribs between the central portion and the shoulder portions. The tread has intermediate grooves ( ) between the central ribs and the intermediate ribs ( ) and shoulder decoupling grooves ( ) between the intermediate ribs and the shoulder ribs ( ). The shoulder decoupling grooves having a depth (D ) being less than the intermediate decoupling grooves whereby the footprint width of the tread surface can expand from first width (NLFPW) under normal load to a second width (HLFPW) under heavy load.

Pneumatic tire having a load dependent adaptive footprint shape

Growing community of inventors

Warken, Luxembourg

Philippe Marie Manne