Air-Blade Tire Water Removal

By now, we have all had chance to use the various high pressure hand driers. Perhaps the proximal unit was the Dyson Airblade <link>*. The key to their design is using a thin plane of high pressure/velocity air to blast water from the skin surface rather than using energetically-expensive heat in an attempt to evaporate the water. They work very efficiently at moving water from the hands to the floor where it pools, waiting to claim an elderly person's hip. The aim is to extend the same principle to vehicle tires.

Driving along in the rain leads to the road getting wet, water pooling on the road surface and generally being a problem for tire-ground friction. To cope with this, tires have grooves, termed "sipes" that help them move water away from the contact patch. This leads to water being forced out of the sides of the tire-ground contact patch and also to water being forced into the sipes/onto the tire surface. The tire then discards most of this water through centrifugal force. Driving alongside a truck, you can see that water is sprayed out around the whole tire circumference. In an attempt to prevent nightmarish amounts of spray, guards/wheel arches and various flaps are fitted to vehicles. These work to varying degrees.

Now, imagine an Airblade-style nozzle fitted to the rear of a vehicle wheel arch. This should be at around a 45 degree angle to the ground pointed at the tire. Now, as the water-laden tire rotates, water in the sipes and adhering to the surface is "peeled" off. This removes the vast majority of the water low down on the tire limiting the average height to which the water is sprayed - improving road conditions. Also, the tire is much drier by the time it comes into contact with the road again, increasing it's water-clearing capacity. The system might be more efficient if the sipes were specifically targeted, but this would require levels of coordination/alignment that in my experience, are likely incompatible with truck operators.

*Although for me, the Mitsubishi Jet Towel is top of the tree.