Silent tires

2001/08/14 Elhuyar Zientzia

• Diseinua
• Ingeniaritza
• Materialak
• Matematika

Those who live next to the highway or main road know better than anyone: those who generate more noise on the road are not the engines of the cars, nor the turuts of the less impatient drivers, that although what they take out is not slow, those who produce more noise are the wheels, and those who generate this annoying noise are the vibrations of the tires.

The hammer drawings of the tires serve to stick the wheel to the road. But these drawings, when vibrating, emit a sound similar to that of stereo speakers. In addition, there are parts that vibrate faster than others, generating more noise.

To silence this noise, a team of engineers from Purdue University USA. has developed a mathematical model to identify the noisy parts and design tires with lower vibration index. The solution is still far away, as the first model made only serves for two-dimensional wheels, so the next work will be to create a mathematical model based on the characteristics of real three-dimensional tires.