hydroplaning

Brady Moffatt bradym at sympatico.ca
Fri May 28 10:13:42 EDT 2004


It's starting to make sense to me now, though the air pressure in the tire
equalling the pressure to the ground hypothesis has limits. Obviously a car
is not weightless is there is no air in the tires.

I think the definition of contact patch is the problem here. For the
equation to be valid, my guess is that contact patch (let's call it tread
block area) is defined as the area of the individual tread blocks within
what we consider to be the usual contact patch. Then, tread design becomes a
factor. A spindly little slick of tread block area 'x' may hydroplane at the
same speed as an aggressively treaded performance tire of the same tread
block area, but it certainly won't have the same limits in any other area of
performance.

Waddaya think? Make sense?

Cheers, Brady
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