The characteristics that have made the air-filled tire the dominant technology on the planet include four characteristics. One of them is low contact pressure, which allows navigation through rough terrain with traction. Our proprietary technology gives us the ability to optimize that contact patch beyond what we’re able to do with radial technology. The next characteristic is low vertical stiffness, which reduces the shock to the machine and the operator. The polyurethane spokes absorb the energy and then give it back which allows the machine to be stable without hopping; the stability improvers the operator’s productivity. Low rolling resistance over rough surfaces is the third characteristic. Solid tires or wagon wheels, for example, lose all their energy as they encounter an obstacle, use all the vehicles energy to overcome the obstacle, and get none of this lost energy back. An air filled tire absorbs the energy and gives it back on the other side. The last characteristic is an air filled tire has minimal or low mass for the load that it carries. The Tweel Airless Radial Tire incorporates these four characteristics but eliminates the issue of catastrophic failure due to flats.
The Tweel Airless Radial Tire is a top loaded tire meaning that it performs similar to a bicycle tire or a suspension bridge. The spokes disburse the forces all the way around the tire radially much the same way air does in an air-filled tire. The tire’s construction pulls the spokes downward and from the outside of the structure to implicate the shear beam. It hangs the load from the top and creates a large footprint which ends up being a very low contact pressure footprint providing good traction and mobility.
Other tires that don’t have air in them, such as foam filled or solid tires, carry the load from the hub to the contact patch and are called bottom loaders. As a result, they get very high contact pressure, which results in poor traction and not a very good footprint.
