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Re: Automobile tires and friction



The main reason why this is so does not relate to contact patch,
however, but to composition. Soft compound tires are required to be wider in
order for the side-wall to support the weight of the car.

Why is this? I would think the side-wall would not have to be
different for most tire widths, except in the limit of very narrow
tires. But I don't know exactly what this limit is.

If I think of this extremely simplistically as a U-shape supporting a
weight (think of this as the end view of a weight resting on the
bottom half of a cardboard box):

+---------------------------------+
| weight |
+---------------------------------+
| | <- box
+------------------------+

Why should the width of the box make a difference in how well the
weight is supported? Perhaps the answer is buried in the precise
geometry of tire cross-section, or the properties of rubber. But in
this first approximation, I don't see the connection.


Stefan Jeglinski