3 ms·

Can't the tires just continue to get wider and wider until the rear tires are even about 4 ft wide? That should provide lots of traction.

culopatin 7y ago
But friction is dependent on the pressure between the contact patches. More area of contact reduces the pressure per unit of area. So you’d need more pressure on said tires without augmenting mass (because then you’d need yet more friction to accelerate that mass, that’s why wings are a thing, more pressure on the tires without adding mass that you’d have to turn accelerate. Problem with wings is that they not only add drag but they are not affecting anything at launch. Maybe if you had a big electromagnet under the car and a steel path under the asphalt.
- magicalhippo 7y ago
  Just pack a giant fan onto it, kinda like an up-side-down hovercraft.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
    Why not going full hovercraft? Use the obsolete tire technology only for transition and slow speeds, thereby eliminating all that rubber dust!1!!
- mox1 7y ago
  Some race cars [1] put fans under the cars, sucking upward. This effectively created a vacuum under the car and allowed it to stick to the road pretty well. It was more for cornering fast than straight-line acceleration. But modern race cars to use aerodynamic tricks to create downforce, but only to keep the car on the ground at high speeds. 1. https://jalopnik.com/brabham-bt46b-fan-car-making-lemonade-from-lemons-5442597 https://jalopnik.com/brabham-bt46b-fan-car-making-lemonade-f...
jacquesm 7y ago
But you won't be turning that car around any time soon. The Flintstones notwithstanding it isn't particularly clever to have your tires run the width of the car because the inner and outer radius during a turn will cause the tire to wear rapidly. You could cut the width-of-your-car tire into a lot of slices I guess but that would be mechanically quite complex and you'd still have to drive it somehow.
T3OU-736 7y ago
On the chance of non-sarcasm :) You get into the limits of being able to transfer the rotation of the axle to the tire patch. Mental picture time, if you will: 1. Axle spins, which rotates the metal wheel |> since the metal wheel is metal to metal with the axle, we will consider it to be one unit, even though technically, it is not 2. Metal wheel rotates the part of the tire near the rim |> There is only so much force which can be applied to join the tire's bead to the metal of the wheel. "Bead locking" can be done, but this is esoteric and, at least in the US, is mostly not legal for road-going vehicles. Also, the amount of space necessary for bead locking components is a complex challenge for the passenger car wheels, and is usually reserved to far larger wheels found in off-road-like vehicles. 3. The tire rim has to transmit the rotation to the tire contact patch, which happens via the tire sidewall. |> This sidewall has to stay flexible otherwise the ride would be nigh impossibly jarring. Check videos of sidewall flex of drag tires for a practical example of this, a-la https://youtu.be/rw3LE78gwhg https://youtu.be/rw3LE78gwhg There are plenty of other things in play, top, but these are the big limiting factors.
gameswithgo 7y ago
that isn't how friction works really.

culopatin 7y ago

But friction is dependent on the pressure between the contact patches. More area of contact reduces the pressure per unit of area. So you’d need more pressure on said tires without augmenting mass (because then you’d need yet more friction to accelerate that mass, that’s why wings are a thing, more pressure on the tires without adding mass that you’d have to turn accelerate. Problem with wings is that they not only add drag but they are not affecting anything at launch. Maybe if you had a big electromagnet under the car and a steel path under the asphalt.

magicalhippo 7y ago
Just pack a giant fan onto it, kinda like an up-side-down hovercraft.
- LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
  Why not going full hovercraft? Use the obsolete tire technology only for transition and slow speeds, thereby eliminating all that rubber dust!1!!
mox1 7y ago
Some race cars [1] put fans under the cars, sucking upward. This effectively created a vacuum under the car and allowed it to stick to the road pretty well. It was more for cornering fast than straight-line acceleration. But modern race cars to use aerodynamic tricks to create downforce, but only to keep the car on the ground at high speeds. 1. https://jalopnik.com/brabham-bt46b-fan-car-making-lemonade-from-lemons-5442597 https://jalopnik.com/brabham-bt46b-fan-car-making-lemonade-f...

jacquesm 7y ago

But you won't be turning that car around any time soon. The Flintstones notwithstanding it isn't particularly clever to have your tires run the width of the car because the inner and outer radius during a turn will cause the tire to wear rapidly. You could cut the width-of-your-car tire into a lot of slices I guess but that would be mechanically quite complex and you'd still have to drive it somehow.

T3OU-736 7y ago

On the chance of non-sarcasm :) You get into the limits of being able to transfer the rotation of the axle to the tire patch. Mental picture time, if you will: 1. Axle spins, which rotates the metal wheel |> since the metal wheel is metal to metal with the axle, we will consider it to be one unit, even though technically, it is not 2. Metal wheel rotates the part of the tire near the rim |> There is only so much force which can be applied to join the tire's bead to the metal of the wheel. "Bead locking" can be done, but this is esoteric and, at least in the US, is mostly not legal for road-going vehicles. Also, the amount of space necessary for bead locking components is a complex challenge for the passenger car wheels, and is usually reserved to far larger wheels found in off-road-like vehicles. 3. The tire rim has to transmit the rotation to the tire contact patch, which happens via the tire sidewall. |> This sidewall has to stay flexible otherwise the ride would be nigh impossibly jarring. Check videos of sidewall flex of drag tires for a practical example of this, a-la https://youtu.be/rw3LE78gwhg https://youtu.be/rw3LE78gwhg There are plenty of other things in play, top, but these are the big limiting factors.

gameswithgo 7y ago

that isn't how friction works really.