| Summary: | Tire performances are strongly influenced by cross section profile, and equilibrium profile has been a focus of radial tire researches, however, how to use the profiles to design radial tires has been reported rarely due to reasons of secrecy. This paper describes a practical method of using equilibrium profile to design radial tires, which is based on the restricted dimensions by tire standards. Based on the membrane model and minimum energy principle, equations of equilibrium profiles of radial tires with flat and curved belts are obtained by using variational approach. A method of designing carcass contours by using these equations is developed, in contrast to earlier methods the proposed method makes the width rather than the height of the point with maximum width on the profiles as the input parameter, and the restriction lengths of carcass by the belt are also calculated at the same time. For 175R14 tire, this paper's results are compared with Akasaka's, the accuracy of this method is confirmed and the effects of belt radius on profiles are revealed. Four different designs of 295R22.5 tire are analyzed by finite element method to verify the benefits of this method. This method can be used to design both tires with larger and smaller aspect ratios, and it will offer a strong guide for designing radial tires.
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