The Goodyear & Tire Rubber Company

Ren&eacute; Bormann

Bernard Croissant

Romain Kunsch

Thierry Koeune

Edouard Michel

Methods for improving vehicle steering performance and robustness of that performance include control of non-uniformities in the vehicle's tires, wheels and tire/wheel assemblies as a way to overcome the tendency of the steering systems in certain vehicle types to undergo &ldquo;steering performance loss.&rdquo; While minimizing lateral force variations (e.g., couple imbalance), a controlled amount of radial and/or tangential force variation is induced in one or more tire/wheel assemblies by means of mass non-uniformity, dimensional non-uniformity, and/or stiffness non-uniformity. For dimensional non-uniformity, the preferred method is to impart a controlled amount of dimensional non-uniformity (preferably radial runout) to the tire and/or the wheel in at least one of the tire/wheel assemblies, followed by statically and dynamically balancing all of the vehicle's tire/wheel assemblies. Preferably, all imparted tire non-uniformities are distributed meridionally symmetrically about the equatorial plane of the tire/wheel assembly.

Growing community of inventors

Moesdorf, Luxembourg

René Bormann

Growing community of inventors

Moesdorf, Luxembourg

Ren&eacute; Bormann

René Bormann