New Airless Tire Designs

[fechter]

Click link below for article:
New Bridgestone Air-Free Tire




Cycling Innovation Skyrockets with NASA Technology in New Airless Tires

These are both interesting. I'm waiting for some real-world testing first though. Past airless designs were pretty bad.

 

[amberwolf]

The blue one looks a little like one variation of the "bulletproof" tires here:

Actual bulletproof bicycle tires

In the first segment of this video about NASA's development of rover/etc wheels for space exploration: Didn't find any commercially-made tires using this tech, and they don't demonstrate if it has all the other necessary functions of pneumatic tires, but it exists. :) The rest of the video...

endless-sphere.com

 

[aroundqube]

Another one - Airless Bike Tires by Air Fom - Better Than air - No More Flat Tires

 

[Eastwood]

I’ve seen a couple of engineers on YouTube make tires like this.(the red tires pic)
There's always something wrong with the designs and they don’t typically work that great. Feel like so many people have attempted these airless tire designs, but it never seems to work out.

 

[neptronix]

Interesting that there's another serious player in the foam tire insert world other than Tannus.
Their system looks more technologically sophisticated and is said to give up to '5000km' of ride..

Truth is that these foam things have a lifetime no matter how you cut it... Tannus recommends you deflate your tire to prolong the life of the insert, but don't state the lifespan.. which according to some users is ~6 months.

Looks like they're still under development? bummer but worth a future re-check

 

[amberwolf]

One of the problems with any of the airless designs I've seen is you can't adjust them for the actual conditions or vehicle / rider / etc weight. Some of them are made in multiple versions equivalent to different spring strengths, but you have to pick just one and can't just vary the tire pressure to adjust for conditions/etc.

And none of them do what a pneumatic tires does--spread the load thru the entire tire across the entire wheel via the air pressure, so you don't beat the crap out of your actual wheel that is designed to work with pneumatic tires to do what it does....