Micheline Airless Tires: A Game-Changing Technology

 

Micheline uptis claims to be longer lasting, foresaving and recyclable as it made from rubber and fiber glass.

From 130 years vehicles have been moving on air-filled tires. These tires also served well on Road and off, but Micheline new design could change all that.

In 2005 Micheline first reveal the Tweel. Tweel results in the combination of word tires and wheels as wheel dose not use traditional wheel hub assembly. In Tweel spokes absorb road impact the way air pressure does in pneumatic tires. For comfortable ride and improved handling more plain spokes would be good. Tweel can’t be adjust once its manufactured. you’ll have to select the different one. For testing Tweels made with five times lateral stiffness as air-filled tires equipped to Audi A4, resulting in very responsive handling.

The pneumatic tiers are made of an airtight inner core filed with pressurized air. Air pressure inside the tire is greater than the atmospheric air pressure, so even with the weight of the vehicles resting on it the tires remain inflated. Pneumatic tires also have drawbacks especially in highly performance or highly dangerous applications. Puncture of the tire results in complete failure. At high-speed tire burst can also lead to a dangerous accident. Especially the military planners are more concerned about the tires being blown out by the single fire or explosion. Obviously, an airless tire can’t be disabled with a single puncture.

In pneumatic tires variations in air pressure results in poor tire performance. Consumers are notably irresponsible when it comes to setting their tire pressure properly and often resulting in unsafe conditions. Pneumatic tires are also open to change in temperature by which internal pressure of the tire can change.

The tweels does have the several flaws. The first and the worst is Vibration. The tweel vibrates noticeably when it’s above 50mph. Vibration in itself might not be a problem but it causes two Major problems: Noise and Heat. At fast moving speed the tweel is Unpleasantly Loud and in long distance driving on constant high speed generates more heat than engineers would like it to produce.

Then there is another problem making pneumatic tires and tweels is totally a different process. Large number of changes would be need to most of the factories. Because tire balancing and mounting equipment is not present in thousands of the auto repair shops, put up a major obstacle to the broad adoption of the airless tires.

By keeping in view these flaws, yet Michelin has no plan to launch Tweel to consumer market anytime sooner. They are currently working on the tweels use in low-speed vehicles, such as construction vehicles. The tweel is completely for such use because in these vehicles the high-speed vibration problems won’t come in to play.

Micheline is also trying to be beneficial for military by exploring military use of tweel. At public demonstration of Tweel, Michelin placed prototypes on IBOT, a mobility device for physically impaired people.

However, Michelin is not the Only company working on airless tires. Resilient Technologies is also developing their own design of airless tires, named as NPT (non- pneumatic tire). They are using more aggressive marketing strategy and plan aimed at military use of airless tires.