ABSTRACT
In 1888, the Scottish inventor John Dunlop submitted a patent for a pneumatic tire for a tricycle. Since that time, many different forms of pleasure and industrial vehicles with soft and fluid-pressure tires have been developed. In construction and mining, especially, many common forms of excavation and loadingmachines such as, wheel-loaders, backhoes, tractor shovels and skid-steer loaders come equippedwith special types of heavy duty rubber tires.Also, many pieces ofmodern civil engineering andmining haulage equipment, such as rigid and articulated-frame dump-trucks, motor-graders and rubber tired roller-compactors, operate through multiple sets of on-the-road or off-the-road rubber tires. Because these air or fluid-filled rubber tires are deliberately designed to deform with axle load or wheel torque, they are formally referred to as ‘flexibly tired wheels’.
