This invention is in the field of pneumatic tires and in particular an inner-tube that will not lose all its air when punctured.
The phenomenum of punctures in pneumatic tires is well known. The problems and dangers involved with punctures in tires applies to tubeless tires and tires with inner-tubes. When even a small hole punctures an inner-tube, the inner-tube usually loses all its air in a very short time. Tubeless tires lose their air slower when the hole is small but larger holes or gashes can cause the air to leave the tire in a few seconds. This presents a number of problems that may be divided into three main categories namely, safety, convenience and costs.
Some of the safety problems of the inner-tube are;
a. Accidents including fatal accidents caused by people changing the flat tire at the side of the road or other dangerous place where passing traffic does not see or can not see a person at the edge of his lane. This danger is increased at night.
b. Many accidents are caused by tires losing their air when the vehicle is traveling. The faster the speed at the time of the blow out, the greater the danger of an accident as the driver loses control of the vehicle.
The danger is great with motorcycles because they only have two wheels and when one of them does not function the likelihood is that the bike will fall and the rider will be thrown off. Cars can also lose control when one tire suddenly loses its air, especially when traveling at high speed.
c. There can be danger involved in having to get out of the car to deal with changing the punctured wheel with the spare wheel in places where the inhabitants are hostile.
d. There are dangers of car theft and robbery when a person is busy with exchanging the punctured tire.
Sometimes this happens when a stranger asks to “help” the driver change the wheel.
Some of the inconvenience factors involved in changing a punctured tire;
Some of the costly aspects of state of art wheels and tires;
These problems are solved or at least to a large extent alleviated by the present invention as is now revealed.
It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description present embodiments of the invention and are intended to provide an overview or framework for understanding the nature and character of the invention as it is claimed. The accompanying drawings are included to provide a further understanding of the invention and are incorporated into and constitute a part of this specification. The drawings illustrate various embodiments of the invention and, together with the description, serve to explain the principles and operations of the invention but the not to limit the invention to these descriptions only.
It is not possible with present technology to have a rubber based pneumatic tire of normal thickness that is impervious to sharp objects. This means that punctures will occur in such tires.
One object of this invention is to enable the effect of a puncture on driving to be sufficiently small that the driver will be able to continue to drive normally after the tire has been punctured. The vehicle will be able to be driven to its destination and at a later time, not necessarily that day, the vehicle could be taken to a tire repair workshop. This would avoid the present need to immediately take time to deal with the puncture and avoid the various other disadvantages of the current art as described in the Background herein. Furthermore, more than one puncture on the same tire or a different tire could be repaired at the same time, thereby saving visits to the repair workshop.
The inner-tube is divided into three main sections, namely the outer tube that is divided into many small independent cells, an inflation tube that is used for filling air into the said cells and a deflation tube that is used for emptying the air out of the said cells.
The inflation tube and deflation tube are to avoid the tedious task of filling or emptying air in or out of each air cell independently.
Each cell would have two one-way air valves, one to let air into the cell and the other to let air out of the air cell. There could be about fifty cells in an inner-tube where each cell is about five centimeters wide. These numbers and measurements would vary from tire to tire depending on size and other factors.
There would be one place to fill the inner-tube namely a one-way valve in the inflation tube. The valve would be accessible to the outside of the tire so that an air pump connection could be made as is common on tires in the art. The incoming pressurized air would enter the inflation tube and from there enter the individual air cells through the one-way valve between the inflation tube and each cell. This way all the cells of air would be filled with air at the same pressure. Air pressure would remain in the inflation tube provided no cell was punctured.
In a case where there is a need to empty the inner-tube from its air, the one-way valve exiting from the deflation tube would be opened. This exiting air would cause the pressure to drop in the deflation tube and the air from all the air cells would exit from the one-way exit valve in each cell.
Another object of this invention is to be able to observe whether one of the inner tube cells has been punctured. This observation could be done externally without removing the inner tube from the wheel rim. There could be a manual pressure indicator or gauge or a digital pressure gauge. When this indicator or gauge is attached to the inflation tube there will be a significant and noticeable drop in pressure when one of the cells of the inner tube is punctured.
Another object of this invention is for the inner-tube with its cell making width divisions, to be divided centrally longitudinally perpendicularly to the width divisions. This would double the number of cells to around one hundred cells, depending on the size of the wheel. In this embodiment when there is a puncture of one cell there would be a loss of air to the tire of only around one percent of the fully inflated tire.
The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and form a part of this specification, illustrate embodiments of the invention and together with the description, serve to explain by way of example only, the principles of the invention:
As will be appreciated the present invention is capable of other and different embodiments than those discussed above and described in more detail below, and its several details are capable of modifications in various aspects, all without departing from the spirit of the invention. Accordingly, the drawings and description of the embodiments set forth below are to be regarded as illustrative in nature and not restrictive.
The air pump connection main valve 112 could have an indicator to show if one or more of the air cells 102 had a puncture. This indicator is described in more detail in
The main tube 122 is divided into many cells as described in
There is one main one-way valve 128 for enabling air to be pumped into the main tube 122 and one main one-way valve 134 for enabling air to exit the main tube 122. These two main valves 128 and 134 could form a double valve and be accessible from the wheel of the vehicle without removing the inner tube from the wheel rim.
There are two parallel inflating tubes 158 and 160 and two parallel deflating tubes 162 and 164. The two inflating tubes 158 and 160 join to form one half of the double valve 166 (not in plan view in the same plain as the rest of the drawing but is at 90° facing towards the center of the wheel) having one main one-way valve 168 for blowing air into the inflation tubes 158 and 160. Similarly, with the deflating tubes 162 and 164 that merge to form the other half of the double valve 166 having one main one-way valve 170 that enables air to escape when that is desirable.
Each cell 152 has in it a one way inflating valve 172 attached to the inflating tubes 158 and 160 to allow air pumped into the inflation tubes 158 and 160 to enter the cells 152. Similarly, each cell 152 has in it a one way deflating valve 174 attached to the deflating tubes 162 and 164 to allow air to exit when that is desired.
The main tube 180 is divided along its longitudinal axis by a divider 156.
Attached to the inflating valve 168 could be a pressure gauge 194 that would indicate the pressure in the inflation tube 158. The pressure gauge 194 would be attached to the inflating valve because when there is no puncture the inner tube pressure will remain high. However, if one of the cells of the inner-tube were to be punctured the pressure gauge reading would drop significantly as the air leaves that cell and the air pressure in the inner tube would leave the inner tube by going through the one way valve in that punctured cell and out through the puncture hole. If the pressure gauge 194 were attached to the deflating valve and one of the cells were punctured the drop in pressure would be insignificant and much harder to detect. The pressure gauge 194 could be used to show the pressure in the tire when filling the inner-tube with air but thereafter the gauge 194 would not necessarily indicate the pressure in the tire but rather be an indicator to show when the first cell