Aerodynamic Improvements of Non-pneumatic Tires with Hexagonal Spokes

A non-pneumatic tire (NPT) has a unique design that offers certain advantages over the common pneumatic tire. This tire is resistant to punctures and immune to blowouts. The present work aims to improve the aerodynamic design of the NPT by keeping the structure of the spokes hexagonal but varying other design features like tread pattern and adding material and filets. CAD designs were developed using Fusion 360 software and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis is carried out using SimScale software. The variation of camber and yaw angles has been conducted with both tread and material enhancement. There was a decrease in drag and lift when the material was added to all the tires, but for all variations of yaw and camber, an increase in drag and lift was seen. The analysis is further extended to see the effect of a wheel well on the aerodynamic performance of the NPT. A decrease in drag and lift of nearly 33.2% and 94.5%, respectively, were observed with a wheel well.