Falken combines astrophysics and origami in its new winter tyres
Falken Tyre’s latest offering in passenger car winter tyres has been inspired by the unusual combination of astrophysics and origami techniques.
Designers working on Falken’s new EUROWINTER HS01 tyre were intrigued by the folding pattern that astrophysicist and part-time origami enthusiast Koryo Miura created for stowing large solar panels into compact payload bays for satellite launches.
If you partially unfold a sheet of paper – or indeed a solar array – that’s been creased using Miura-san’s design, then you end up with a 3D structure of crooked valleys snaking across the page. It’s this shape that has inspired the design of the sipes in Falken’s new winter tyres.
Traditional sipes are cut in straight lines or two-dimensional zig zags. Yet making too many incisions can start to reduce the rigidity of the tread blocks, compromising some features such as steering response and rolling resistance. However, the complex ridge and valley shape of the Miura pattern only allows a certain degree of distortion before they interlock to improve rigidity.
With this, Falken claims that the EUROWINTER HS01 boasts a five per cent improvement in snow and wet weather handling, and a ten per cent improvement in aquaplaning resistance when compared to its predecessor. The Miura sipes and tread pattern design ensures excellent steering response and directional stability.
The EUROWINTER HS01 also features a special pattern design, ‘Adaptive Constant Pressure’, following a constant radius like circle to improve feedback. This also makes the tyre behave in a more consistent manner at varying speeds to boost dry weather handling by five per cent.
The tyre’s compound benefits from Falken’s 4D Nano Design Technology. Utilising the power of one of the world’s top supercomputers, this optimises the tyre’s compound properties at the nano-scale for improvements in wear and tyre performance. The result is a specially-optimised winter compound with a tread that remains pliable and maintains high levels of adhesion at lower temperatures.
The origami-inspired tyre is available in speed ratings of up to W (168 mph) and diameters of up to 20 inches, which still boasts a B or C rating for wet braking.