Mechanics of the Pneumatic Tire

We have attempted to describe the mechanical problems of tires, from the point of view of elasticity theory, and have, in this connection, regarded research on the stresses and deformations in the casing as the primary problem of tire mechanics. Less attention was paid to factors which have to do with the behavior of tires with respect to the vehicle, because we believe that the effects of the choice of any design or structural parameters or materials, upon the behavior of tires, are not explainable in a sufficiently general manner, as long as the above problem, designated as the chief one, cannot be handled, at least numerically. How far we still have to go, in spite of many efforts, can be seen from Section III. The striking thing here is that belted tires have scarcely been investigated up to now. This may be due, in part, to the fact that the prerequisites for a theoretical investigation, reported in Section I, have been provided only imperfectly for this type of tire, up to now. Our own contribution, in this respect, was an outline of a generalized theory of the tire cross section, found useful for the belted tire. Measured against the state of knowledge in related fields, the present survey of the literature available to us shows that tire mechanics still represents a rather poorly developed field of research which might arouse the interest of scientists working at academic centers, for example. Section II of this work can also be thought of as stimulating interest in further development, as it mostly presents methods which can be taken over from other fields.