Design of a prototype of an adaptive tire pressure system

At a time when the global warming stands out as one of the major concerns of this century, every effort to reduce the impact of human activity on the environment deserves to be considered seriously. The pollution generated by the road traffic has a large responsability in this phenomena. There are several ways to reduce the ecological footprint of road vehicles and one of those is to work on the so-called rolling resistance.The rolling resistance is largely influenced by the pressure in the tires. Keeping the optimal pressure in all four tires depending on the driving conditions is a guarantee of energy efficiency. Furthermore, tire pressure has also a significant impact on the wear of tires, the vehicle handling, the braking distance and the overall performances.In view of the foregoing, the company Yovinn AB, in collaboration with the Centre for ECO2 Vehicle Design, would like to design a prototype of an adaptive tire pressure system. Such a system would be able to automatically and continuously adapt the pressure in the tires to the driving situation in order to always maintain the optimal pressure. After a summary of what already exists in this field, the present work aims at describing a possible solution supported by calculations and CAD drawings. As it will be explained, the proposed solution enables a fast pressure adaptation in all four tires of a standard passenger car. Moreover, since it makes use of basic pneumatic components it is quite easy to implement for a relatively small cost. However, the system does not permit to make use of the energy stored in the air under pressure contained in the tires when deflation is required. The study was performed for one type of car only, i.e. the Volvo V70, and has to be adapted on a case-by-case basis.