Experiments on spray from a rolling tire

A novel laboratory apparatus has been built to understand the key mechanisms behind spray emerging from a rolling tire. Several researchers have assessed the performance of spray suppression devices however, there are no known efforts that address the question "what needs to be suppressed?" This investigation into how water in a tire groove evolves into a droplet field will ultimately contribute to driver safety.Using high-speed imaging, water passing through a single circumferential groove was observed to leave the tire patch in the form of a thin liquid sheet, connecting the roadway and the tire. The sheet disintegrates into a droplet field and the breakup modes associated with this decay were identified with respect to Weber number.Weber numbers based on the properties of water, tire speed and tire groove width were tested at 2700, 10900 and 24400. Measurements for the breakup length of the liquid sheet showed a dependence on Weber number proportional to We-1/6. The lateral displacement of the water exiting the tire patch was also measured. These tests showed the overall size of the spray field grows with We however, the maximum water volume for all We's was delivered to the same distance from the road.Downstream from the tire patch, a determination of the droplet field was performed. From this study, the distribution of droplet sizes was determined as a function of Weber number. At We = 2,700, droplet sizes between 80 and 9000 microm were detected, with a mean diameter near 800 microm. Both the range of droplet sizes and the mean diameter were found to decrease with Weber number by approximately We-1/2. Based on these size distributions, Correlation Image Velocimetry (CIV) was used to estimate the distribution of droplet velocities as function of their size. These results reveal a strong correlation between droplet diameter and velocity which is comparable to that predicted for a simple sphere.