Quote:
Originally Posted by RedDevil
Did you actually read what I wrote?
To say the tire just 'deforms' in contact with the road is missing the whole point.
The contact patch is FLAT.
Every lug is aligned parallel to the next lug, and it really does not matter how high it is. The distance between the lugs at the tarmac is identical to their distance at the belts.
Nothing magical happening, just plain logic.
Then, over time, the constant bending of the belts combined with the pressure in the tires will elongate them ever so slightly. So, indeed, the worn tire with its shallower grooves, but stretched belts, will roll ver so slightly further over one rotation.
From personal experience I can account for how much that can be: namely, 200 meters over 35.6 kilometer, about 0.6 %.
I knew my post was going to be criticized, as it seems to go against gut feeling and simple logic.
But once you understand the mechanism it should not be hard to get.
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Sorry for being overly critical, I believe inflation pressure will influence what you are describing. Distance traveled is dependent on the distance between the axis of rotation and the ground where the tire is making contact.
If inflation pressure changes, then so does that distance. If the contact patch becomes shorter from front to back because of inflation pressure, then distance between the axis and the ground must have increased. Does the contact patch change in length as the tire is worn?
I might design an experiment to test this.