Morphing tire treads that change their depth, pattern, and road contact depending on the conditions.

Inspired by [bs0u0155]’s self clearing rain tire, I thought of a tire that morphed its tread pattern, spacing, depth, and road contact depending on the road conditions. Coupled with pneumatic tire pressure management, the tread for getting off the line at a stoplight would be a wide slick but at highway speeds would reduce the contact patch as much as possible to a harder, narrow patch, limiting road friction. Off-road gets low pressure soft, knobby, conforming treads, while rain scoots the water out the sides with active live tread pumping, maintaining traction.

{Reprising the toast/rug/shower news segues, the tires could leave a long, novelized version of the conversation inside the car on the road as it progresses. Seen from over head the highways would look like the product of document shredders.}

This is one of those nano-machine ideas that depends on swarm intelligence near the microscopic level, but it happens where the rubber meets the road.
-- minoradjustments, Jan 01 2024

So as far as I can tell, you want the tire tread to do two things, 1. change the hardness/durometer of the tread compound and 2. physically shift the morphology of the tread pattern. All this is happening in a rotating tire exposed to pretty large loads.

What's the mechanism of either of these features? The easiest way of (sort of) achieving both is with active control of the tire pressure. High pressure makes the whole carcass of the tire more rigid, leading to less deformation and consequently less heating*. It's tricky to pump air into/out of a rotating tire, but it can be done <link>.

Changing the hardness of the tire material could be doable. Embedded iron particles could be aligned with magnets to increase rigidity, but I'll leave it as an exercise as to how to get electromagnets close to the tread surface at the contact patch.

*Deformation-derived heating and bursting is how they set your car's tire pressure spec. This is based on testing, usually in the worst case scenario. For example a high-spec big-engined Mercedes S-class might have tire pressures high enough to stay safe while cruising at 170mph full of heavy passengers & luggage with an outside temp of 55C and a road surface at 110C. If, in reality, you're cruising at 70mph at 20C with 2 people, you can probably let a couple of psi out of the tires and have a more comfortable ride and marginally better grip.
-- bs0u0155, Jan 02 2024


Multiple pneumatic chambers with differing tread patterns/materials, such that, when all auxiliary chambers are deflated, you basically have a high rigidity road bike tire. The outermost chambers are softer, and are inflated for better traction, and ranks in between have knobs that retract in uninflated mode and extend in active mode.

Covers most of the operations with a compressed air supply and an active valve bank in the hub. (And extremely expensive tires).
-- MechE, Jan 03 2024



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