Influence of Tread Pattern on Tire/Road Noise

An indoor road-wheel facility at the Technical University of Gdańsk was used to study the noise emission from a variety of tires with different tread patterns. The tires were run both on a smooth steel drum and a drum covered by a replica road surface. All tread patterns were hand-cut to generate several families of simple treads with regular pitch for a systematic study of how groove design influences noise.

Most of the observed, tread influenced phenomena could be explained by generation mechanisms such as radial vibrations induced by tread block impact, pocket air pumping and pipe resonances in the grooves. For instance, it was observed that, when speed increases, sooner or later the tread block impact frequency will coincide with the pipe resonance frequency and then generate excessive noise at that speed.