Pneumatic tire and wheel rim assemblies

Claim 1

A radial pneumatic tire comprising a tread, a tread-reinforcing breaker assembly beneath said tread and extending across the full width thereof, a pair of tire beads, a pair of flexible tire sidewalls each radially extending between a respective one of said beads and a respective edge of said breaker, said tire being reinforced by a reinforcing carcass ply of relatively inextensible cords, said breaker having both at least one low angle ply and at least two high angle plies, one of said high angle plies being above and one of said plies being below said low angle ply to make the breaker substantially transversely rigid so as to resist bending moments about its center and inward pull of said edges by said sidewalls when said tire is inflated to its normal working pressure and to minimize cross-sectional circularity of the tire when so inflated, each of said sidewalls extending from said breaker assembly towards a bead wire core along an arc defining a flex zone which has a respective center of curvature, said arc beginning at a first point adjacent said breaker assembly where the thickness of said sidewall is substantially twice the minimum thickness of said sidewall and ending at a point defined by the intersection of a vertical line extending through said first point with said sidewall, said sidewalls being formed to have a shape when the tire is inflated to its normal working pressure such that the tangent of half the angle subtended by the arc of each of the flexible sidewalls at its respective center of curvature is less than +0.85, said angle controlling the pneumatic constant of said tire wherein a decrease in said angle and the arc defining said angle resulting from the increased transverse rigidity of said breaker reduces the circularity of said sidewalls, increasing said pneumatic constant, resulting in an increased load capacity of said tire.