Investigation of Non-Pneumatic Tires Based on Helical Hexagonal Cellular Structure

Non-pneumatic tires (NPTs) have drawn attention mainly due to low contact pressure and low rolling resistance due to use of hyper-elastic materials in their construction. In this paper, an attempt to innovate the conventional design of NPT with hexagonal honeycomb cellular structure is made by creating the boundary planar geometries of the tire, skew to each other at a certain angle. Adding to the functionality as a tire, this modified structure increases the performance of automobile components by rejection of heat through convection (forced) at the expense of engine power. The primary investigation includes study of the effects of variation in degree of skewness with the strength and flow of air through the tire. The flow parameters are computed for rotational case and the heat transfer is computed for flow over a brake disk. The secondary investigation consists of finding an optimum range of the degree of skewness. The validation for strength is computed through Finite Element Analysis. The fluid flow is computed through Computational Fluid Dynamics approach in ANSYS Fluent. This modified structure improves the aerodynamic condition near the brake rotor that increases the rate of heat rejection by forced convection from the brake rotor surface.