When a tire spins over a wet roadway, pressure at the front of the tire generates a lifting force; if that lift exceeds the weight of the car, it will start hydroplaning. To prevent this, the grooves of a tire’s tread are designed to redirect the water. Now researchers have visualized flow inside these grooves for the first time, using a version of particle image velocimetry (PIV). PIV techniques use fluorescent particles to track the flow.
The results reveal a complicated, two-phase flow inside the tire grooves. As seen in the images above, bubble columns form inside the tire grooves. The team’s results suggest that the bubble columns depended on groove width, spacing, and intersections with other grooves. They also saw evidence of vortices inside some grooves. (Image credit: tires – S. Warid, others – D. Cabut et al.; research credit: D. Cabut et al.; via Physics World; submitted by Kam-Yung Soh)