Vyssion wrote:Essentially, all the different tyres try and do is recover contact with the asphalt. With wet weather tyres, the tread is there to divert the water which is displaced by the mass of the car on the contact areas into the channelling on the tyre surface. Pirelli's full wets I read somewhere could displace around 60L/sec of water at 300 km/h through this method. At those speeds, I'm sure you can imagine, the amount of time that the tyre is contacting a specific point on the asphalt is pretty much negligible.
The idea is cool and I'm sure there are some hydro-thermodynamic effects that are present, but for it to work, you would need to develop a way to heat the water, evaporate it, remove the vapour from the area and then wait for your wheel to drop the 1-2mm down to contact the asphalt all in a very small time period. Water is also a very good heat absorber (I remember something like 4200kJ/L of energy or something or other from Thermodynamics)
In vehicle dynamics terms, for you to have a forward traction, your tyres contact patch needs to be in shear along the longitudinal direction, before "slipping" back to normal (See Picture below), which occurs when the inner part of the wheel rotates much faster than the outer part. This slippage is like the sort of "springing action" that allows you to actually move. To see what I mean, take a look at this slow motion video of a dragster taking off. You can clearly see the slip at around 7-8 seconds in and the differing inner and outer rotation speeds.
http://i.imgur.com/TgUbBCN.png
If there is water between the road and tyre, this shear slip will occur much sooner since the water will lower the effective friction coefficient of the two materials. Hence why it is much easier to get your wheels spinning in the wet vs. dry.
But yeah definitely an A+ for thinking outside the box mate!!
