Dana Holding Corporation has published a new white paper for the commercial-trucking industry that presents optimized tire pressure as a solution to prevent blowouts and other tire events, improve fuel economy, and reduce operating costs.
Titled Optimized Tire-Pressure Management, the paper is free and available for download. Authored by Jason Sidders, engineering manager for advanced chassis control systems at Dana, it describes the benefits of an optimized tire-pressure management system that not only monitors pressure for all tires on a line-haul tractor, but has the capability to automatically adjust that pressure, inflating or deflating as needed for optimal driving conditions.
The paper also describes the pros and cons of currently available tire-pressure monitoring systems. Recently proposed Phase 2 standards from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) support the need for more technological options to help manufacturers further reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase fuel efficiency, including systems such as Dana’s optimized tire-pressure technology. These agencies specifically identify the need for optimized tire pressure in order to maximize the efficiency of low-rolling-resistance tires and also recognize the benefits of automatic tire inflation versus monitor-only systems.
“We support these new standards proposed by the EPA and NHTSA, which introduce the concept of a 1 percent credit toward fuel-economy targets for linehaul truck owners that utilize automatic tire-inflation technology – a credit that does not apply to monitor-only systems in the proposal,” said Mark Wallace, executive vice president of Dana and group president of Dana On-Highway Driveline Technologies. “In fact, we believe the incentive should differentiate between inflate-only systems and technology such as Dana’s, which features both inflate and deflate capabilities to boost efficiency even further.”
