Quote:
Originally Posted by p911gt3
It is quite likely that you are right, but why would the contact patch need to be narrower in order to make the contact patch longer? Shouldn't the contact patch always be a similar number of degrees/radians of the circle long? Yes there are tons of variables such as the flexibility of the rubber, the weight of the whole wheel tire unit, temperature etc. If you are indeed right, I will need to make sure to give you one of these  |
since i can compromise the integrity of a tire with my hands (tens of pounds) and cars weigh thousands of pounds, i think its safe to say that the cars weight is going to have a larger impact. but i dont think that even matters really since with any tire you are going to have to deal with tire structure and thats going to make the differences even smaller.
bottom line is that (while not perfect) contact patch size is a function of the weight of the car and how much weight each inch of contact holds (tire pressure) if tire pressure and weight dont change, a longer contact patch has to be more narrow because it can only be so large