Effect of Texture of Iced Road Surface on Characteristics of Ice and Snow Tires

This paper describes the dependency of characteristics of studless tires on ice, on macro and micro texture of the ice surface. The work has been conducted on bulk ice track coated on the drum of an indoor tire tester.

In order to clarify the effect of micro texture, iced roads composed of different ices (different in shape and size of crystals) are made by means of controlling the growth rate of ice. Macro unevenness of ice surface was incrementally created by given amounts of travel of studded tires, to clarify the effect of macro texture.

Results are that the characteristics exhibit on “ideal” (dense and smooth) ice a remarkable dependency on ice temperature but that this dependency is much smaller in case of any other ice condition.